I've written previously about how I think "The Wire" is the greatest show in TV history.
But I can control the urges to rave beyond that. Others, particularly those across the Pond who have taken to “The Wire” with unmatched passion, have taken their "Wire" fascination, OK obsession, to great lengths.
;)
Case in point is a post titled “When It’s Not Your Turn”: The Quintessentially Victorian Vision of Ogden’s “The Wire” in which authors Joy DeLyria and Sean Michael Robinson put on period costumes, so to speak, and take "The Wire" back into the mid 1800s for a literary smackdown with the likes of Charles Dickens.
And talk smack they do, presenting a case for “The Wire” as classic literature, even packaging the story as period novel. Here's one passage:
"Lastly, one might stand back from a pointillist work; whereas physically there is no other way to consume The Wire than piece by piece. To experience the story in its entirety, without breaks between sections, would be exhausting; one would perhaps miss the essence of what makes it great: the slow build of detail, the gradual and yet inevitable churning of this massive beast of a world.
The genius of The Wire lies in its sheer size and scope, its slow layering of complexity which could not have been achieved in any other way but the serial format. Dickens is often praised for his portrayal not merely of a set of characters and their lives, but of the setting as a character: the city itself an antagonist. Yet in The Wire, Bodymore is a far more intricate and compelling character than London in Dickens’ hands; The Wire portrays society to such a degree of realism and intricacy that A Tale of Two Cities—or any other story—can hardly compare."
Halloa!
It's all a bit much for me, but take it for what it’s worth: Over the top admiration that represents just one more layer of the creativity that makes the “The Wire” so thought provoking years after its run on HBO came to an end.