Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #263 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-10-10
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: Arabic, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Swedish
• Number of discs: 5
• Running time: 780 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Picking up after the dramatic events of its maiden season, the second series of The Wire achieves something really rather special: it even manages to outclass the first.

For those fresh to the show, surely the best, most intelligent piece of scripted drama to emerge from America in the last decade, the actual premise is fairly simple. Across the thirteen episodes of its season, it charts one case, and the numerous influences upon it. So it devotes roughly equal time to those committing the crimes as it does to those chasing them.

This time, the Baltimore Police Department have twin worries. There’s the continuing, festering narrative of events from the season before, along with a new problem when a container of dead bodies turns up at the nearby docks. After initial battles over whose statistics the bodies will be attributed to, a fresh case begins for the embattled officers of the Major Crimes Unit.

Yet season two is about much more than the case itself. Bubbling under the surface are characters with real problems, that take their toll on the day-to-day, while at the docks themselves there are union struggles underway, which also have a part to play. Thanks to, frankly, superb scripting, these various narrative threads are woven together quite brilliantly, and the result is perhaps the finest series of The Wire to date. And that’s no small feat.

If you’re one of the many who have let The Wire fly under their radar thus far, then you’re urged to rectify that. Clearly season one is the logical starting point, but begin your adventure in the knowledge that this second series is simple exceptional. For the rest of the US television industry, this is the standard to aim for. --Simon Brew

Synopsis
Unlike most television crime dramas, which neatly introduce and then solve a case all in the space of one hour, HBO's THE WIRE follows one single drug and homicide investigation throughout the length of an entire season. Centred around the drug culture of inner-city Baltimore, the series' storyline unfolds from the points of view of both the criminals lording the streets and the police officers determined to bring them down. Created by writer David Simon (THE CORNER, HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET), THE WIRE's multifaceted approach offers a nuanced overview of every aspect of the drug trade and the complex morality of its participants. The second season is included here in its entirety.

Customer Reviews

simply astonishing!
The second series of the wire does what no other programme can do, and that is somehow manage to be better than the first series of the wire.
I had to get it off amazon.com months ago and have to say it is the most powerfull engaging television that I have watched. It carries on with the same characters as last time, the opposing forces of Mcnulty and Barksdale, cops and dealers, and adds a whole new layer of characters as we have a look at the baltimore docks and the stevedores, working class americans making horrible decisions to fight for the survival of their trade. It rises above cliches of cops and bad guys effortlessly and looks at human bengs struggling with what America and its intstitutions can offer them and how to survive the grim situation of poverty and desperation. It can be heartbreaking and at times blackly comic and left me in awe at such a fantastic achievment.

Full-blooded drama at its best
If The Wire reminds me of anything it's not a cop show but Alan Bleasdale's G.B.H. This is drama at its best, epic, politically engaged, unsentimental and populated with characters who feel as near to real people as fiction gets. It's also one of the funniest, warmest shows I've ever seen.

TV at its grittiest/greatest
What can you say that hasn't been said in the US about the Wire? Shown only on FX on Sky in an 11 o clock slot on a Wednesday evening you would be excused for thinking that this was a show that the producers wanted to slip in without it registering on the radar. How wrong of the producers (if this is case however you will understand why it has to be shown late when you watch it) this has to be television at its finest. Effortlessly weaving characters into plots that seem so unrelated at the start you would be forgiven for thinking nothing could link them together at the start of the series. Dock workers? Murdered Prostitutes? Greeks? Russians? Drug Dealers? You really do have to watch it to realize what I mean. You will think back to an episode in which you thought had a scene of little importance to the plot only for it to become crucial to the series as a whole an episode later. I must mention the stunning performances turned in by all the actors, especially the new ones for this series who have really established them selves. With characters from series 1 brought back together with an amazing plot you can see why this show is the hit it is in America. The on-screen pairing of Dominic West (Detective McNulty) and Wendell Pierce (Detective "Bunk" Moreland) is perfect and these help to add the moments of dark humour to the series. This is a show that must be watched to be believed. I myself am particularly looking forward to the DVD version of this show, so I can watch it with the subtitles on and catch little bits of information I might have missed first time around. A must-buy for anyone...