The Wire: The Complete First Season | 
 enlarge | Director: Clark Johnson
Actors: Dominic West, Sonja Sohn, Jr. Larry Gilliard, Wendell Pierce, Idris Elba
Studio: HBO Home Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $49.98
Buy Used: $15.48
You Save: $34.50 (69%)
New (42) Used (36) from $15.48
Rating:  242 reviews
Sales Rank: 1432
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, NTSC
Languages: English (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language), French (Dubbed)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Region: 1
Discs: 5
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Running Time: 775 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.4 x 1.6
MPN: 026359887321
ISBN: 0783127928
UPC: 026359887321
EAN: 9780783127927
ASIN: B0002ERXC2
Theatrical Release Date: June 2, 2002
Publication Date: 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Told from the points of view of cops and criminals alike, follows a drug investigation in Baltimore, MD.
Amazon.com
After one episode of The Wire you'll be hooked. After three, you'll be astonished by the precision of its storytelling. After viewing all 13 episodes of the HBO series' remarkable first season, you'll be cheering a bona-fide American masterpiece. Series creator David Simon was a veteran crime reporter from The Baltimore Sun who cowrote the book that inspired TV's Homicide, and cowriter Ed Burns was a Baltimore cop, lending impeccable street-cred to an inner-city Baltimore saga (and companion piece to The Corner) that Simon aptly describes as "a visual novel" and "a treatise on institutions and individuals" as opposed to a conventional good-vs.-evil police procedural. Owing a creative debt to the novels of Richard Price (especially Clockers), the series opens as maverick Detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West, in a star-making role) is tapping into a vast network of drugs and death around southwest Baltimore's deteriorating housing projects. With a mandate to get results ASAP, a haphazard team is assembled to join McNulty's increasingly complex investigation, built upon countless hours of electronic surveillance. The show's split-perspective plotting is so richly layered, so breathtakingly authentic and based on finely drawn characters brought to life by a perfect ensemble cast, that it defies concise description. Simon, Burns, and their cowriters control every intricate aspect of the unfolding epic; directors are top-drawer (including Clark Johnson, helmer of The Shield's finest episodes), but they are servants to the story, resulting in a TV series like no other: unpredictable, complicated, and demanding the viewer's rapt attention, The Wire is "an angry show" (in Simon's words) that refuses to comfort with easy answers to deep-rooted societal problems. Moral gray zones proliferate in a universe where ruthless killers have a logical code, and where the cops are just as ambiguous as their targets. That ambiguity extends to the ending as well; season 1 leaves several issues unresolved, leaving you begging for the even more impressive developments that await in season 2. --Jeff Shannon
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 242
 Cover Your Ears August 23, 2010
D. J. Murphy (USA)
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
I'm sure The Wire is an excellent series, IF you can get past the every-other-word expletives and F bombs... I couldn't.
 Excellent crime drama August 2, 2010
Mark bennett (portland, OR)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a really well written crime show. Or more accurately a video novel for television. TV is full of shows about crime and the police, but its all mostly melodrama for children. The first season of "the wire" is a dense show full of realistic characters and offers a tremendous view into the politics of a large modern American city. And it gives its due to both sides of the law. It gives as much insight into the housing project drug trade as it does to police, prosecutors, politics and the courts. We see a single case evolve over the course of a season. We see the arbitrary nature of how/why law enforcement decisions are made. We see the politics of law enforcement and we see the "politics" of the drug trade at housing projects.
I ignored this show for a long time because I was so tired of law&order and the various CSIs. Television, for a while, was full of trivial crime drama. But this is different. Its such a great standalone work that its almost a shame that it didn't end with one season.
 Story overshadowed July 14, 2010
Shannon Owens (Gordon, PA)
1 out of 7 found this review helpful
I was looking for another highly rated series to watch with my boyfriend & The Wire came up. In the past our favorites have been ALIAS, SIX FEET UNDER, DEXTER & THE SOPRANOS. We watched the first 3 or 4 episodes of Season One, hoping to find another "winner". UGH. For the life of me, I don't get the fascination with the F-WORD!!! What's the deal?? If you have good writers, why do they depend on this word at least 5 times in every sentence? Imagine this: filming a scene & the director calls "cut" & says "You left out 3 F-words". To me, this is a sickening word, shows a limited vocabulary & I don't want to hear it over & over & over & over. If that makes me a prude, SO BE IT. It's a sad commentary.
Really takes off July 6, 2010
C. Rocklein
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Yes, the rave reviews are all true about The Wire, and yet the first few episodes in Season One might have you beleive otherwise. Dialogue is a bit forced at times and sometimes has that 'scripted' feel. It doesn't take long though for the show to find it's groove and total absorption to ensue - will certainly be the case by mid-season and definitely by the end. Fortunately there are 4 more seasons after this each better than the next *though people argue about season 5. Don't worry - you're in for a riveting ride, and more lost sleep than you might think possible. Careful about starting this on a night (or week) where you have to get up the next day. The dangerous thing about the DVD set is that you CAN go on to the next episode without needing to wait a week. You can go on.. and on.. and on.
I have to admit, McNulty was never my favorite character, and one of the reasons I feel later seasons are better than Season 1 (still great in its own right, no mistake) is that his dominance recedes season by season so that he's hardly even in Season 4. I admit I kind of liked him in Season 5 - hey, the situation called for it. But, that's another review. Get 'The Wire'. You'll love it.
Other good Showtime/HBO: Damages, Dexter, Breaking Bad.
Richly textured crime drama May 31, 2010
Scott FS (Sacramento, CA United States)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
There are (at last count) 237 reviews for the first season of 'The Wire'. I've read a number of places that this is an excellent series, so I thought I'd give it a try.
This has a large cast, and it takes a while to put every one of them in their place. You've got your politicians, your police, your detectives, your FBI, your reporters, your drug runners, your murderers, your spouses, your lovers, and your drug kingpins. Wow! And those are just the main characters.
The conceit of the series is that the police must get judges (oops, forgot them in the cast...) to approve wiretaps. In the first season, that means the pay phones that the drug runners and drug middlemen use to run their drug trade, primarily in the projects.
The cast is outstanding. The setting is good, the photography great.
I liked the first series, even though the ending is sort of a let down because there are many loose ends. However, that just sets up the second season.
Highly recommended. It paints a picture of the intractability of shutting down drug traffic, because if you put one cadre out of business, another quickly takes its place. After all, nature abhors a marketplace vacuum.
I liked this a lot. Season two promises to be just as good.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 242
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