Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-09-22
• Rating: To Be Announced
• Formats: Box set, PAL
• Number of discs: 4

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

DVD 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.

Synopsis
Acclaimed HBO series THE WIRE centres on the drug culture of inner-city Baltimore. The show's storyline unfolds from the viewpoints of both the criminals ruling the streets and the police officers determined to bring them down. This release presents the fifth series in its entirety.

Customer Reviews

A classic - the best television drama ever made
A magnificent and very appropriate finale to what has been the best TV series I have ever watched. The best by a very, very long way.

Beautifully concluded, without ever trying to have all the answers, the final scenes in particular are deeply affecting.

For some favourite characters, the end is inevitable, and it is an incredibly poignant, human drama, in spite of the makers' ongoing insistence that the story is plot driven.

As in real life though, throughout the gloom, there are a few chinks of light, and even the darkest moments are under-scored by very dark humour.

As a story of real people and the work they do (whether legal or not), it's been an unmatchable portrayal. As a critique of the politics of life, it is brutally honest.

Overall, series 2 retains the edge for me - the courage of its scope and depth was something I had never seen before on screen. However,overall, this programme genuinely deserves to be called a masterpiece. I don't know where TV can go from here to better itself, and sad to say, I almost feel consigned to spend the rest of my viewing life watching re-runs.

Good but flawed
The first 4 series of The Wire were absolutely fantastic and the overall series still remains one of the very best ever made. This, the fifth series is in (some degrees) as good as the previous and several exciting storylines develop (particularly the politics and the Stanfield story). However there are 2 major problems with this series, firstly the major new storyline involving McNulty and the media is unbelievable and continues too long. Secondly the commissioned numbered of episodes (13) was reduced to 10 (at short notice) which gives an extremely hurried and unsatisfactory end. (Clearly there are whole stories told in seconds of final montage).
A shame !!

the road home
And so another televisual odyssey ends. 60 episodes over five seasons and a programme which has been described as more talked about than watched (this is the problem of a series playing on satellite/cable channel FX) - although the DVD box-sets of The Wire are on the best-seller lists here at Amazon. With just 10 episodes in the final series David Simon seems to be trying to 'do more with less', a phrase used several times in the offices of The Baltimore Sun newspaper which features largely. Simon of course worked at that very newspaper for 12 years and so it seems almost obvious that he would chose to focus on the media at some point. What he shows is that interplay between media, politics and policing; the symbiotic relationship these agencies have with each other and how each in turn can be exploited by the other.

McNulty is back. His presence was missed in the last season, so it's good to have him back, but he's in a very worrying place; looking like he could skid off that road again at any time and driven by that passion which can create 'good police' but also perhaps lead him to test the boundaries of what is acceptable (and indeed legal). Carcetti, now installed as mayor, has come face to face with a huge deficit in his budget which leads to massive cutbacks for the police: no overtime and an effective end to the special crimes unit. This leads McNulty to hatch a plan that will give the papers what they want and therefore place pressure on the Mayor to provide funds for police work: a serial killer. Now, I love this programme, but this plot-line had me wrinkling my nose in discomfort. It isn't that I didn't believe it was possible, Simon shows in intricate detail how it can all be manufactured, but I just didn't believe that this would be the course any detective would take, even a true maverick like McNulty. The fact that Freamon, who has always been a moral yardstick of sorts, is part of the whole conspiracy only compounded my worry. It wasn't until the penultimate episode (which is the best of the season, possibly the series) that I began to feel it might work. Such a grand scheme allows Simon to bring so many elements of his story together, it's just crucial that having got so many balls improbably into the air we see them come crashing back down to earth.

That said, there's something about this season that doesn't quite work. It's like a programme which knows that it's coming to an end, tying up its loose ends, bringing things full circle and showing that people and events will continue in the same vein after the credits roll. It's all just slightly self-conscious.

But I don't want to dwell on that. As someone (I think it was Freamon) says, 'It's about the journey, not the destination.' And it's been a hell of a journey. I have written previously about the impact television can have when we, the viewers, make an investment in the characters. Over such a prolonged period of time (60 hours of television) we can see so much of their lives, so much development that, as when we read a novel, there is a connection there which means that even a serial murderer like Chris can arouse our sympathy even whilst beating someone to death. A junkie like Bubbles can have us hoping and praying that he can make it another clean day. A morally ambiguous anti-hero like Omar can have you wanting to put him out of his misery like a wounded pet. That is extraordinary television. To be able to put forward complex sociological arguments, economic theory, and political discourse together with street slang, profanity and poetry whilst leaving the audience concentrated on the characters is quite an achievement. Let's also not forget the other character in the piece: Baltimore. I genuinely feel that if I went there now I would know where, and more pertinently where not to go. Just as The Sopranos gave a real sense of New Jersey The Wire has shown in great detail the differences between the projects, the docks, city hall, 'Hamsterdam', the corners and the variety of people that populate them. The final episode has its heart on its sleeve as it shows what this programme has always been about: the people of Baltimore. Along the way of course it has shown us some important aspects of modern life relevant to all of us.