Tag Archives: Wire

Charlie Brooker tries to get you to watch the Wire

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Charlie Brooker has just struggled to do the Wire justice on FX. And failed. But you can’t blame him. No one can really do the Wire justice. All you do is end up saying “Best TV programme ever made” or “work of art”

He started out funny and fanatical. He was basically agreeing that it’s really boring listening to people banging on about such and such an American tv programme being great. But in any case, you can ignore them all because only the Wire was worth watching. And it’s “a true work of art.”
Then there were various talking heads, a few of whom were recognisable, saying “it’s a work of art” and so on. Someone said a freind from America had said it was the best thing that had been on TV since Abigail’s Party . Alexei Sayle said “Hi, my names Alexei and I’m a Wire-aholic”

The rest of the programme was pretty pesh. It even achieved the seemingly impossible and used clips in a way that made the Wire look corny and formulaic.

The interviews were so focussed on the British and Irish actors in the Wire as to have Brooker forced to misrepresent the plot. He introduced Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) as the leader of the Barksdale crew. Argh. This rides roughshod over a whole subplot, in which Stringer is manoeuvring his way through the ranks to take over. (Starting as the dumber but tougher Avon Barksdale’s sycophantic sidekick, he works in his own ideas about puttting the Barksdale gang on a standard commercial footing and goes for Avon’s crown.)

The talking head suggestions as to why the greatest TV series ever made wasn’t even remotely popular threw up the likeliest reasons as being that
(a) most people are too stupid to appreciate it,
(b) it’s very complex and cumulative so you have to commit to the whole thing or it’s too hard to follow and
(c) its cast is 70% black, so it would never reach a mass US audience. All probably true.
(Plus the extravagant use of cuss-words, I suspect, given that the Charlie Brooker trailer show had to blot out half the dialogue in its clips. It’s probably never going to be on mainstream TV. But, then, as one of the talking heads said, you want everyone to watch it but you also want it to kep it as your own secret.)

The main point here is that you can’t do the Wire justice. Everyone who loves it is awestruck. You just end up gushing or saying ludicrous things like “it’s your civic duty to watch it” as Charlie Brooker did at the end, “or else watch celebrity goose-wrestling on ITV6.”

Tagged by Atheist Perspective

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This blog was tagged by atheist perspective I’ve shamelessly lifted an explanation of what that means from the atheist perspective site, which is excellent by the way.

We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
– Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
– People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
– At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
– Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Well part A is completed with minimal effort. Clearly the next stage must have to be the 8 random facts. Argh, 8 things about us that we wouldn’t mind going on the net – but are actually interesting enough to post. Damn that rules out almost anything I could put here….

Hmmm…. hmmm…..

  1. Between us we have lived on or visited 5 continents. Antartica is one of the two we’ve never been to, although one of us has been close enough to swim in it’s waters. (Yes, it really is as cold as you would imagine).
  2. Between us we speak – to a standard ranging from fluent (English) to pathetically halting (well, the others) – 5 languages and can make sense of a couple more with babelfish’s help. Oh yes, 5 languages Plus Latin.
  3. One of us genuinely believes the Wire is the major artwork of the 21st century. This is a minority viewpoint in every sense, even on the blog.
  4. We train with weights, more or less every day. One of us even got a certificate that will pay out thousands if anyone he trains gets injured, The other one has long been planning to enlist him as her personal trainer and do something spectacularly stupid…
  5. One of us has become obsessed with taking photographs and keeps getting better and better digital cameras every few months. And the pictures are getting better all the time as well.
  6. One of us refuses to accept any limitations, no matter how glaringly obvious, and hence persists in thinking she can do 3d graphics, despite the evidence of the senses.
  7. Terry Pratchett remains the one author we agree 100% over and have obsessively read every book produced. (Not all good though- the “actual” sci-fi books are poo and the science companion is distressing)
  8. CSS design is soundly despised by every one who has anything to do with this blog. Even their pets hate CSS.

Choosing 8 blogs was no easy task either. There were obvious choices – like nullifidian – who have probably already been tagged within an inch of their lives so would just get pissed off. However, I sprinkled my fairy dust over the atheist blogroll and found some worthy, if less familiar, contenders.

[tags]Blog Meme, Atheism, Wire, WhyDontYou, Why Dont You, Society, Culture, Travel, Languages,Blog, Meme, Blogs[/tags]

McNulty from the Wire confusingly in the 300

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The 300 is visually stunning and more than well worth watching.

I’ve got that out of the way. Now I’ll make a few random points, some of which conspired to distract me:

  • McNulty from the Wire is in it. I read in the Guardian on Saturday that he’s really English, otherwise this would have been even more of a shock.
    I’ve always thought he was the worst actor in the Wire. Now I can see he was labouring under the impediment of having to produce a Baltimore Irish accent, so I ve got more respect for his Wire performance. However, this doesn’t spill over to seeing him as a Spartan, so it’s hard not to keep expecting his chubbier well-dressed partner from Series one to pop up.
  • Similarly, the actor whose name I have no idea of but who so exemplifies the dorkish English lad in Mike Leigh movies that he’s in a good few is in there as well. Bringing to mind a few Mike Leigh movies.
  • The abs are uniformly amazing. OK, all the actors (male or female, leads or extras) are uniformly so perfectly muscled that I began to look for evidence of them wearing muscle suits. Then i realised that maybe they were digitally enhanced…. (well, d’uh)
    Cos I can’t conceive of any other form of enhancement that would achieve this level of perfection.
    I am pretty sure I saw McNulty with his shirt off in the Wire at some point and I don’t remember him having a chest that knocked your eyes out. (Human superficiality being so deep in me, I would probably have given more mental leeway to his acting shortcomings.) Has the new James Bond raised the bar so high? These people are physically utterly stunning.
  • I hope nobody does a Braveheart on this and takes it as a true version of history, despite it starting off as a comic.. The Spartans were bastards. Their whole society was so ultra-fascist that a fascist would have cavilled at it.
  • It’s filled with extreme comic-book violence, so stylised it looks pretty. The graphics are truly superb. The film uses the washed-out-with-one-dominant colour style – which is red in battles, unsurprisingly – pretty well throughout, I reallly like that. (If you are already bored with that style, then you may get rather annoyed. )
  • It has war elephants. They are great
  • It has mass battle scenes, mass court scenes, They are all great
    The music is great. – Think Black Hawk Down meets that bit in the Fifth Elemnent with the opera singer. Well, without the opera singing, then but you subliminally hear it. Bah, I guess that’s just me then
  • The characters are coompletely and utterly unengaging. These are comic book characters of course, so you can’t expect any different. I’m not saying it’s a fault, it isn’t. I’m just saying.
  • I couldn’t tell one superbly muscled actor from another – unless I recognised them from an old Mike Leigh film or the Wire – so I wasn’t always sure who was saying what to whom or why. Unfortuantely, I am very often incommoded in movie-watching by not being able to tell the actors apart, or follow the plots, so this is no insult to the movie either. Though, in theory knowing something of the tale, as most of us do, I should have made a better stab at understanding it
  • Obviously Film Studies 101 would suggest that Xerxes represents Bin Laden, and so on. (OK, he’s not Iranian, but the Persians in the movie aren’t very convincing Iranians. And how many people can tell the difference between Iran and any other middle-eastern country?) I suspect this is a spurious argument. I mean, what sane person would want to identify their country with Sparta?
  • Lastly, does there always have to be an evil woman to blame for everything? In Sparta, ffs? Sparta-wise, any woman would seem to have been really lucky to have avoided being left on the hillside to die for being a girl.

Oh blimey, these impressions are totally half-arsed.

Sorry, I’ve only watched it once and lost the thread a bit.

I’ll watch it again in a few days and you might get a coherent blog. (What are the odds of that, you say? Alright, slim.) It really is one of the most beautiful films I’ve seen.
Go to see it, if you can.

The Wire Series 4 so far, on FX

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In case you think that this series of the Wire is straying a bit from the central strands of Wire, here’s your half-time peptalk (a couple of episodes too soon, granted.) If you are getting a bit bored with the politics, I’d have to agree. The election has been dragged out too long, with the same (albeit crucial) points about the corruption being made too often, for my taste. I suppose it’s important, in terms of the overall meaning of the series. I agree with the points, I think it’s very well done. I’m not really complaining….. It’s just that the nature of American politics is both too familiar to us from many other films and tv series and, to be honest, a little boring if you’re not a Yank.

The four lads are the central focus throughout this series and they’ll continue to be so. The first programmes should have already established their characters but there are some surprises in the way they develop, although the clues to where they are going are pretty deftly placed already (with the benefit of whatever the opposite of hindsight is, given I’ve already seen the rest of the series.)

Other strands worth paying attention to, because of how they’ll develop include Marlo’s setting up of Omar; Rawls’ shameless doubledealing with Carcetti and the Mayor; Bubs getting battered because of his nephew’s involvement with the corners; the exposure of the impact of race in the political system, exemplified by the white cop who is increasingly adopting the language of the corner and who is actively campaigning for the Mayor, (largely because his luck in catching the mayor in flagrante has got him made sergeant); the ineptly hidden camera, which will have repercussions for the same cop; the kid who breaks into Prez’s car when he locks his keys inside..

Extra-good things in tonight’s episode were Naimond’s visit to his dad in jail. The conversations between Naimond, his mother and his father were brilliant. His dad expresses the male “soldier” values that he is convincing Naimond underpin the street trade. Naimond listens avidly, trying to learn the male role, both impressed and fearful that he won’t be able to live up to his father’s expectations. The fact that these values are demented propaganda doesn’t occur to any of them. The mother is busy manipulating Naimond to start working for her benefit. She is the most uncompromising advocate of the successful street dealer “soldier” and “family” values, being in the advantaged position of profiting from them without putting herself at any risk. This stuff is just brilliant, so subtly written, with great depth so well conveyed through what appears to be completely natural speech. Of course the writing is brilliant, but the acting is superb as well. (plus the costume design, the sets, and everything else, but one thing at a time here, hey.)

The last crucial bit I have to mention is the kids finding out that the bodies are just dead people not transmuted zombies. The “If animal trapped, call…” message stencilled on the door of the empty building that serve as tombs for Marlo’s enemies has infinite resonance. The whole incident is really subtle. Duquon shows much greater adult understanding of the difference between real bodies and fantasy tales. He introduces the more naive kid to the reality in really gentle way. When the naive lad realises that these are just bodies, he expresses an awareness of the ubiquity of violent death in their surroundings which seems so world-weary, when set against his previous insistence that the people were being transformed into zombies. It’s a big growing-up moment for him, soon to be followed by a very adult realisation that the killers know that he’s the one they got to trick Lex to going to his death.

Britain eats its own young

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In a timely tribute to the Wire Series 4, which is supposed to be shown on an obscure satellite channel from tonight – although I can’t find it – Britain has decided to model itself on Baltimore’s East side. Teenagers shooting or stabbing each other has become a staple item of every day’s news. Today, the police announced a new task force after three teenagers in South London have been shot within a few weeks.

There have been too many reports about the the horror of British childhood recently to ignore them all.

Britain was bottom of a UNICEF league table of European children’s well being. The Netherlands came top. Anyone who has been in the Netherlands and the UK will probably agree to the truth of this. Walk round most English housing estates and you’ll see enough semi-feral children to make you fear for the future.

There could be an infinite number of blogposts about the reasons for the difference, although my favoured one is that adults in the top-ranked countries often actually treat their kids with respect and talk to them and spend time with them…

The BBC quotes Paul Vangeert, a Dutch psychology professor:

Much of this, he says, comes from the relationship that Dutch parents have with their children. And, from the fact that less pressure is put on them at school.,,,,One of the strong points of the Dutch family, he says, is that it is very open and communicative. Relations are generally good between parents and children and they can talk about almost anything.

This analysis seems like pure common sense to me but it fits very badly with the current child-rearing fashions. There are any number of TV programmes (SuperNanny, etc) to tell us that acting towards our offspring as if we are paid dogtrainers will work wonders.

Just in case you doubt the truth of the survey result, there is a story so repellent and sadly all too imaginable that it makes you start thinking there must be a missing link species living in the UK. In case you ever wondered about the home lives of the type of people who go to watch cage-fighting shows or illegal dog-fighting, here they are. And these are females. This is a story to make you reach for the culling apparatus.

Four Devon women goaded a boy and girl toddler to fight and filmed the result. (That’s only a link to the BBC story, not the film.) Some quotes:

The boy, aged two, is seen crying after being punched in the face by the three-year-old girl and is told by one of the four women in the room “not to be a wimp or a faggot” and to hit her back.

The court heard that when interviewed by police, one of the women said: “I didn’t see any harm in toughening them up. I done the same with my own children.”

(The kids are now in care. Which doesn’t really inspire much confidence that they’ll end up any better off, the care system being well known for turning out stable and balanced human beings… )

The whole thing makes you wonder about how many more of these gangrenous morons there are. Well, listen to this, from the police Detective Sergeant :

“Locally this is something that is new to us, but we are aware that similar incidents have occurred elsewhere in the country and it is something people need to be aware of.”

PS. If you don’t know the UK, Devon is almost as far from inner-city squalor as you can get. It’s mainly rural and one of the most popular holiday destinations for the few English people who still take holidays in England.

Guns and kicking

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Fights with kicks rather than punches are very much more likely to lead to serious injury or death, according to a pathologist I heard on TV the other day but can’t find a reference for. (Thank you, Google….) Anyway, with or without scholarly support, simple logic suggests that most of us can kick much harder than we can punch, because a kick engages the whole bodyweight. If you kick someone or stamp on them, there is a good chance you will kill them.

So, even in unarmed combat, the feet are deadlier weapons than the hands. The likelihood of death depends on the power of the weapon. To take up on points in the guns-and-crime blog, fights in which feet are used will be deadlier than those in which punches are traded. Where the protaganists have knives or guns, there is always more chance of death or serious injury.

So, the often-expressed argument that “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” falls down here. For a given level of aggression, the chance of death rises the easier the access to deadly weapons.

This isn’t the whole issue, of course. Every Swiss citizen is required to hold a gun. I doubt if the Swiss murder rate is even equal to the UK’s, let alone the USA’s. (Except, obviously, the murder rate in the English village, Midsomer Norton, which must put Baltimore in the shade) Baltimore has the highest murder rate in the USA (genuine thanks to Wikipedia ) but lower rates of non-fatal violent crime than the next highest contender in the murder sweepstakes, which is Detroit.

With no local knowledge of US cities- beyond what’s provided by the supreme TV show The Wire, of course – this is just speculation. Maybe guns are just easier to get hold of in Baltimore than Detroit? So any crime is more likely to end in a death?

There has got to be more to it, of course, given the Swiss example of a country with lots of guns and few murders. Social and cultural factors can provide an explanation. The social divisions in American cities are huge,. They are made more painful for those at the bottom of the racie and class heap by a context of values that regard those without money as worthless.

It’s common for ministers (BBC ) to blame hiphop music for the spread of gun crime in England. The glorification of guns and money in gangsta rap lyrics is indeed often ugly. However, it reflects values common in American society. These may be attractive to young men around the world who feel unmanned by the options open to them. However, it isn’t likely to influence fulfilled and optimistic young men, beyond a fantasy level. This is like blaming heavy metal bands for teenage suicides.

And in any case, it comes back to the avilability of guns. There are always dangerous and violent people. If you have the misfortune to come up against them, you had better hope they don’t have guns. (And that they don’t know about the feet thing either.)