The Wire: Season 5 [DVD] [2008]

Product Description The Wire Season 5 concludes the award-winning TV series with a bang. The bodies are piling up in Homicide, but funds for police work have been diverted to the schools. Meanwhile business is booming on the streets as the war between East and West Baltimore’s drug kings reaches a new intensity. McNulty is drinking again. Bubs is clean again. Omar is back with a vengeance and Carcetti is struggling to make a difference as Mayor. After taking us through the streets, the docks, the corridors of power and the schools, The Wire brings us to the Baltimore media, where the successes and tragedies of all of our favourite characters become ammunition in the battle for circulation figures. Amazon.co.uk Review It’s borderline tragic that one of American television’s finest shows of recent times comes to an end with season five of The Wire. Long-praised for its astonishing mix of character, grit and outstandingly scripted drama, the upside is that the show sure goes out with some style. As with every season of The Wire, there’s an underlying theme running alongside the exploration of both sides of Baltimore’s drug problem, and this time it’s the media. Fighting cutbacks, yet trying to maintain quality, the staff of The Baltimore Sun prove to be a compelling addition to the mix. On top of that, there’s also Mayor Carcetti’s battles at City Hall with the budget, a stretched police force looking for easy statistics, and fractions among the city’s main drug dealers. Desperate times, ultimately, call for desperate measures, and it turns to McNulty to come up with a plan that threads through each of the city’s factions. That The Wire has maintained its standards for five straight seasons is surely something to be celebrated all by itself. Yet what’s even more remarkable is the way that it leaves our screens, seemingly forever. No character is safe and nothing is black and white, right up to the quite wonderful final episode. And what a way to go that last instalment proves to be. Giving nothing away, it’s a superb fanfare to a genuinely stunning--and unequalled--piece of television drama. If you’ve not already, you really should find out what all the fuss about. --Simon Brew