THE NEW YORKER writes about "The Wire"

[lisa needs braces]

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/22/071022fa_fact_talbot

Warning: It's long.

Critics, meanwhile, have compared the show to a great Victorian novel. The Chicago Tribune, Salon, and the San Francisco Chronicle have called it the best show on television. Jacob Weisberg, writing in Slate, went even further, declaring that "The Wire" was the best American television series that had ever been broadcast: "No other program has ever done anything remotely like what this one does, namely to portray the social, political, and economic life of an American city with the scope, observational precision, and moral vision of great literature." Sometimes the fan base of "The Wire" seems like the demographics of many American cities—mainly the urban poor and the affluent élite, with the middle class hollowed out.