As a medium for serious storytelling, television has precious little to recommend it – or at least that has been the case for most of its history. What else can we expect from a framework in which the most pregnant moment in the story has for decades been the commercial break […] ?
David Simon on why he created The Wire (The Times Online) is a great, fifteen page read.
For the last few days I’ve been watching the series back-to-back again and I’m sure The Wire shows television can indeed be a medium for serious storytelling. There are fortunately many other examples of good television throughout its history, but perhaps not as often as it happens in cinema. But I have no doubt in my mind The Wire is surely among the five best pieces of moving image art I have ever seen, besting the best of movies. If you consider its five seasons as a 3000 page, five volume script, it’s perhaps the best piece of writing ever done for an audiovisual medium. Every piece matters as Lester says, and the way everything fits in the end is a thing of true beauty.
Source: entertainment.timesonline.co.uk
