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DVD The Wire - The Complete Third Season
With volatile issues of Baltimore city political reform as its narrative focus, the third season of The Wire superbly maintains the series' astonishingly consistent status as the greatest "novel for television" ever created. While the Baltimore police department's wire-tapping investigations continue to monitor the intricate and now legitimately fronted drug ring of Russell "Stringer" Bell (Idris Elba, smooth as ever), detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) continues his loutish ways, navigating through a series of shallow sexual conquests while doing some of the best cop-work of his career. Stringer's ex-convict partner Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris) is back in the picture and bent on eliminating a drug-dealing competitor named Marlo (Jamie Hector), and Baltimore P.D. Major Howard "Bunny" Colvin (Robert Wisdom) tries his own defiantly independent brand of street justice by essentially legalizing drugs in "Hamsterdam," where isolated sections of the city are established as open drug-dealing zones, utterly without the knowledge or approval of Colvin's superiors. As city councilman Tommy Carcetti (Aiden Gillen) plots his own ruthlessly ambitious strategy for the mayor's seat, Baltimore officials, McNulty's wire unit, and the entire Baltimore P.D. stand poised for the inevitable fallout from street-level and executive-level manipulations of power.
Of course, this is just the tip of a very large iceberg, as The Wire continues its labyrinthine yet tightly controlled chronicle of over 50 characters, major and minor, who are all flawlessly woven into the fabric of these 12 remarkable episodes. For season 3, series creator David Simon continued to recruit a top-drawer lineup of reputable writers (including novelists Richard Price, Dennis Lehane, and George Pelecanos) and directors (including Ernest Dickerson, Tim Van Patten, and Agnieszka Holland), and by the time a major character is killed in the season's penultimate episode (arguably the series' finest yet), it's clear that The Wire has earned its crown as the most ambitious and intelligent crime drama in the history of American television. DVD extras are excellent, as usual, including five illuminating episode commentaries (an absolute must for devoted fans of the series), a Q&A session with cast & crew moderated by renowned TV critic and author Ken Tucker, and a classroom conversation with Simon that delves deeper into the creative process of the series. Having deservedly earned its renewal for a fourth season (out of a projected five, according to Simon), The Wire delivers surprises aplenty (keep a close watch for startling revelations) while proving, yet again, that cable-TV is the place to be for anyone seeking respite from the relative mediocrity of mainstream network programming. --Jeff Shannon
Review(s): DVD The Wire - The Complete Third Season
Not just the best television ever created... on the list for the best fiction every created
I have never written a review for anything purchased on Amazon. However, upon finishing the forth season of The Wire and being a devoted fan of this show since the first season, it is this show that has compelled me to write a review. Part of the reason is clearly to join in the fun with those whose complete devotion and love for this show is obvious. Part of it is to help promote a show that lacks in ratings due primarily to the expectations they have of their audience.
But the real reason I am writing this is in the complete off-chance that David Simon cruises Amazon ratings, reads this and listen to me BEGGING HIM to find a way to make this series last beyond a fifth season.
Anyhow- on to the review. With little doubt, The Wire will take its place among **the world's** greatest fiction ever created. The Wire deserves a place on the same shelf has Homer's epics, Chaucer's tales and Shakespeare's plays. My sense is that most who have left their feedback here would not disagree.
The characters in this drama live and work within very real instituations that all of us do. They work in and around the system to the best of their abilities. These characters live within organizations that have goals, metrics and lives of their owns that overshadow the individuals that comprise them. The people are flawed in real and human ways. But every day, they go to work- whether that work happens to fall on one side of the law.
Each scene, each line of dialogue, each camera shot has been deliberately considered. It is completely evident that David Simon, et.al. are primarily focused on the story. It's not about what the audience wants or expects. Of course the situations have been constructed to create a textured, intricate fabric, but the character respond with sincerity to their predicaments.
For those who are not initiated into The Wire- like others, I highly recommend starting with Season 1. Some suggest that it is necessary for future seasons. I actually disagree with this. While you will certainly miss some of the nuance in subsequent seasons, it is possible to watch the seasons out of order.
However, the big challenge with this work of fiction is that each subsequent season only becomes more complex than the one before it. Watching season 1 is in many ways the best way to "dip your toes" into the water as it (surprisingly!) is the least complex of the 4 seasons. Furthermore, I am going to depart again from my friends, and suggest that the second season is also fairly critical as it establishes a few characters that become key players in later seasons (eg Prop Joe, the Greeks- who I actually suspect will become quite important in Season 5 what with Marlo being introduced to them). But beyond that, I actually thought Season 2 was quite good on its own.. but sure- certainly not as critical in the story of the Barksdales.
For those who have seen the forth season, it is nothing short of spectacular. I find myself to have an empty space in my heart now with nothing more left for the season and salivating for the fifth and final one to return.
To the uninitiated, who crave beautifully constructed, flawlessly executed and frighteningly addicting works of fiction... this is masterful literature for our generation.
They don't get much better than this!
The third season of The Wire is at least as good as the first two. What a pity we don't have TV of this quality in the UK. But DVDs and Amazon mean that we can watch it anyway. Eat your heart out British Broadcasting Corp!
paulhodgson2
It's all been said in virtually every other review. This is the most wonderful programme (all seasons) ever created for TV that TV doesn't appear to know about - at least in the U.K. Thanks to HBO for getting behind this great achievement on every level.Each season on DVD is well worth the wait. Seasons 4 and 5 a.s.a.p. please.
Related DVD's The Wire - The Complete Third Season
It hardly seems possible, but The Wire's second season is even better than the first. The "visual novel" concept of this masterful HBO series is taken even further in a rich, labyrinthine plot revolving around the longshoremen of Baltimore's struggling cargo docks, where corruption, smuggling, and murder draw the attention of detective McNulty (Dominic West). What follows is a series of events which at first seem unrelated (including 13 bodies found in a cargo container), and then the ongoing effort to topple the drug empire of "Stringer" Bell (Idris Elba) and the imprisoned Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris), whose business is suffering from short supply, high demand, and disruption of distribution. The dutiful diligence of a Marine Police Patrol Officer and the moral outrage of the... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Daniel Attias DVD Release Date: Released the 25 January 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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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... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Daniel Attias DVD Release Date: Released the 12 October 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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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... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Daniel Attias DVD Release Date: Released the 25 January 2005 Usually ships in 1 to 3 weeks
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Family dysfunction. Treachery. Betrayal. Coarse profanity. Brutal violence. Graphic (and sometimes brutal) sex. No, it's not The Sopranos, it's Rome, HBO's madly ambitious series that bloodily splatters the glory of Rome just as savagely as Monty Python and the Holy Grail soiled the good name of Camelot (but with far fewer laughs; very few funny things happen on the way to this forum). Set in 52 B.C. (Before Cable), Rome charts the dramatic shifts in the balance of power between former friends Pompey Magnus (Kenneth Cranham), leader of the Senate, and Julius Caesar (Ciaran Hinds), whose imminent return after eight years to Rome after conquering the Gauls, has the ruling class up in arms. At the heart of Rome is the odd couple friendship between two... More Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 15 August 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Deadwood: The Complete Second Season continues the Shakespearean brilliance of the landmark first season, created by NYPD Blue head writer David Milch. Milch either wrote or supervised the writing of each of the 12 episodes in this stunning follow-up, which contains more than a few surprises for anyone who thought they knew the myriad characters in the late 19th century town of Deadwood--a mucky, ungoverned, exceptionally violent development in South Dakota. As with the first season, Deadwood continues to be about many things--survival, loyalty, alliances, duty--but all of them are happening against a titanic battle between several parties to consolidate power and real wealth in the territory. Despite his cutthroat ethics, astonishing profanity, and bursts of cruelty,... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Davis Guggenheim - Michael Almereyda - Timothy Van Patten DVD Release Date: Released the 23 May 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
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