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![The Wire: The Complete Series [DVD] [2008]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/91hXM+fXJpL._AC_SL3840_.jpg)
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Product Description Note: This DVD is designed to be played at an aspect ratio of 4:3.The Wire Complete Box Set comes packaged in a black sleeve featuring all 60 episodes re-mastered on 24 discs. With special features including audio commentaries with writer/creator David Simon, director Clarke Johnson and writer George Pelacanos, Q&A sessions with the cast and crew and an hour long "behind the scenes" documentary. One of television's most critically acclaimed programmes, The Wire addresses the seedy side of Baltimore’s finest looking into money, drugs, politics and murder. Told from the point of view of both the police and their targets, the series captures a universe of subterfuge and surveillance, where easy distinctions between good and evil, and crime and punishment, are challenged at every turn. A study on urban life in one of America’s toughest cities, each season of The Wire has focused on a different aspect of Baltimore, starting with the police force and the drug trade, then moving on to City Hall, the education system and concluding with the media. desertcart.co.uk Review The Wire is one of those programmes where the increasing number of people who seem to passionately recommend it are simply not wrong. For buried underneath a mountain of praise, and talk of it being one of the finest television shows of all time, is a staggering piece of work, one that slowly but surely takes a look at the many facets of the drugs trade, centred in the city of Baltimore. Series by series, we spend time with the cops, the dealers, the media, local politicians, the education system and more, as The Wire gives each careful treatment, and a three-dimensional portrayal. It also paints a picture of a city in real trouble, with Baltimore one of The Wire’s uncredited stars. But where the show really delivers is in the characters it creates and moulds, and the very real troubles and challenges each of them must face. The show’s detailed strokes are even more compelling than the broader picture it paints. Enhanced by a series of non-showy performances in front of the camera, and some immaculate writing behind, The Wire really is that proverbial real deal. It’s genuinely unpredictable (characters of all sizes find themselves ruthlessly bumped off when you least expect them to), fearless in its tackling of certain subjects, and is that very masterpiece that an increasing army of champions of The Wire suggest it is. The five series contained here are genuinely American television at its very finest, right through to the final scene. Mesmerising television. --Simon Brew Review: One of the great works of fiction - As many reviews have written before me, this is more than a cop show. It is a PHD on the socio-political elements of a post-industrial city. It is a dissection of the war on drugs, the betrayal of the working class, the bloated bureaucracy struggling to keep everything together, the schools that teach pupils to pass exams, not to be critical thinkers, the numbers-driven agenda of the police and how the media report it all. The Wire is genuinely a seminal work of fiction, novelistic in its structure and bleak in its portrayal. If you're after an action-driven series, this is NOT it. The story is driven by dialogue, and characterisation, hardly by action. I think over the course of the five series, a gun is barely raised by a police officer and there are no over the top shoot-outs and explosions so often seen on American television. The language is foul (though nobody can make the f-word seem more eloquent than some of these characters), the violence at times vicious and the overall content very mature, but the series is better for it, as it needs the gritty realism to make it believable. Thankfully the show was on HBO, which gave the makers the luxury of not having network rules for such content. And believable it is, of the two creators, David Simon was a journalist and Ed Burns a homicide detective and school teacher. No wonder three of the five seasons concentrate explicitly on their disciplines. I've recently watched The Wire for a second time, and as much as I loved it the first, it was twice as good the second. You can concentrate on the absolutely incredible writing and acting (it is possibly the most quotable show in existence) and pick up on the nuances of direction that you hardly notice the first time. It is slow to start, and is definitely a show you cannot dip in and out of. It is fairly hard to watch, often self-referential, with important events occurring off screen, and characters who you see maybe only once or twice and who's name you definitely only get once, doing something central to the plot five episodes after their brief introduction. However it is a show that rewards the reader with concentration, as it only gets better. For me the fourth season, which concentrates on the pupils at an inner-city middle school, and the teachers who try so desperately to prepare them from a life outside 'the corner' is the best. The performance of the four teenagers who play the main pupils is genuinely stunning, as is the performance of the stone-cold enforcer Chris Partlow, one of the most chilling characters ever seen on big or small screen. Many moments in this season will pull on the heart strings. No matter who your favourite character though, by the end you will realise there is only one - the city of Baltimore itself. I don't think I've ever seen anything so thought-provoking, heart-breaking and hilarious all rolled into one. You know that book that you read every year? That CD you can listen to no matter what your mood? That movie you bought on VHS, DVD, 25-year Special Edition DVD and then blu-ray and holds pride of place on your shelf? This is the TV equivalent. I can genuinely see this becoming an annual watch for me, almost a rite-of-passage, something I just have to do. To sum up: I cannot recommend The Wire enough. It is as good as anything I have ever seen, heard or played - TV, film, music, games, this quite possibly tops the lot. It is no surprise that it has a rating of 9.7 on IMBD, with the highest film having a 9.2. It is without a doubt the greatest TV show I have ever seen. The Sopranos paved the way for making TV a genuinely artistic medium for story telling, but if in the next 100 years The Wire is topped, I will be very surprised. Review: Hardwired - The Wire has garnered more appreciation than any other television series, including an amazing 9.7 stars at IMDB. But how much of that is hype? Its predecessor Homicide, the life and times of the Baltimore homicide division (broadcasted 1993-98), was based on a book of David Simon, the creator and co-writer of The Wire, and was awarded 9 stars at IMDB. Does that mean that it's almost as good as The Wire? No, it doesn't, so IDBM's star system is fallible. Homicide is a decent series in itself; one could say that it's Baltimore's own Law & Order version (there were even cross-overs with that series), and some of the storylines and characters (like Frank Pembleton, Meldrick Lewis, Al Giordello, Tim Bayliss) are absolute great. But in the end it remained a "crime-of-the-week" series, solid but not particular outstanding, and its overrated stars must be seen more as a hommage to The Wire than that it has earned them on its own merites. The Wire on the other hand, couldn't be more different. It's also situated in Baltimore, David Simon's hometown, but there the simillarities stop. This is storytelling the like of which has seldom entered the small screen. In a mere 60 episodes (compared with the 122 of Homicide) this series show the crumbling decay of urban life from all perspectives - the police, the drug scene, the politics, the corruption, the media, even the school system. It is, literally, breathtaking in its scope. Part of its stunning success is the stellar performance of an amazing cast of almost unknown actors. Part of it is the cinematographic quality of the shows, almost all shot at locations in Baltimore. But most of it is the storytelling. No "crime of the week" or "body of the week" here. This is in effect a 60-episode movie. There is no "Previous in...", there is only a story that rolls on and on, asking the utmost concentration of its audience. You just can't hook into it at any given episode, you really need to start watching from the beginning. That's why it's probably better on DVD than TV. And HBO must be admired for sticking up to his guns! But here you have it, an epic tale in which these writers, directors and actors brought alive the lives of the corner boys, the dealers, the detectives from the squad who try to bring down some of Baltimore's drug czars via wiretapping (hence the title), the top of City Hall, from the Mayor down to the police brass trying to obfusciate the crime rate figures, the city councillors, congressmen, senators, governors, school teachers, the harbour union, journalists, the life and times of people, not just standard characters. It seems impossible to touch so many subjects in just 60 hours, but almost each character has been drawn in sharp lines with a depth that is almost Dickensian in ints intensity. It starts like a cop & robbers show, but it ends as an immense tapestry of people and events that leaves an audience by times gasping for breath. Where have we seen portraits of users and dealers and corrupt police and politicians in such a brutal and yet compassionate way? Many of them are deeply flawed but this series show that they are indeed people, and that is maybe the series' greatest strength. US television series on the whole are not particularly well endowed with storytelling qualities - the reason why West Wing, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Farscape or Carnivàle jump out immediately. But The Wire tops them all. Shakespeare, Dickens and Simons rolled in one. There is one drawback; as one reviewer moaned, "Watching this show has ruined a lot of other television shows and movies for me." Well, if that's the price one has to pay, it's a bargain!
| ASIN | B001BBHG1S |
| Actors | Dominic West |
| Aspect Ratio | 4:3 - 1.33:1 |
| Best Sellers Rank | 850 in DVD & Blu-ray ( See Top 100 in DVD & Blu-ray ) 98 in Crime (DVD & Blu-ray) 98 in Television (DVD & Blu-ray) 118 in Box Sets (DVD & Blu-ray) |
| Customer reviews | 4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars (1,841) |
| Dubbed: | English |
| Is discontinued by manufacturer | No |
| Item model number | 7321902249360 |
| Language | English (Dolby Digital 5.1), French (Dolby Digital 2.0) |
| Media Format | Box set, PAL |
| Number of discs | 24 |
| Product Dimensions | 20 x 15 x 5 cm; 620 g |
| Release date | 8 Dec. 2008 |
| Run time | 3853 minutes |
| Studio | Warner Home Video |
| Subtitles: | Dutch, English, Finnish, French, Greek, Hungarian, Portuguese, Swedish |
J**R
One of the great works of fiction
As many reviews have written before me, this is more than a cop show. It is a PHD on the socio-political elements of a post-industrial city. It is a dissection of the war on drugs, the betrayal of the working class, the bloated bureaucracy struggling to keep everything together, the schools that teach pupils to pass exams, not to be critical thinkers, the numbers-driven agenda of the police and how the media report it all. The Wire is genuinely a seminal work of fiction, novelistic in its structure and bleak in its portrayal. If you're after an action-driven series, this is NOT it. The story is driven by dialogue, and characterisation, hardly by action. I think over the course of the five series, a gun is barely raised by a police officer and there are no over the top shoot-outs and explosions so often seen on American television. The language is foul (though nobody can make the f-word seem more eloquent than some of these characters), the violence at times vicious and the overall content very mature, but the series is better for it, as it needs the gritty realism to make it believable. Thankfully the show was on HBO, which gave the makers the luxury of not having network rules for such content. And believable it is, of the two creators, David Simon was a journalist and Ed Burns a homicide detective and school teacher. No wonder three of the five seasons concentrate explicitly on their disciplines. I've recently watched The Wire for a second time, and as much as I loved it the first, it was twice as good the second. You can concentrate on the absolutely incredible writing and acting (it is possibly the most quotable show in existence) and pick up on the nuances of direction that you hardly notice the first time. It is slow to start, and is definitely a show you cannot dip in and out of. It is fairly hard to watch, often self-referential, with important events occurring off screen, and characters who you see maybe only once or twice and who's name you definitely only get once, doing something central to the plot five episodes after their brief introduction. However it is a show that rewards the reader with concentration, as it only gets better. For me the fourth season, which concentrates on the pupils at an inner-city middle school, and the teachers who try so desperately to prepare them from a life outside 'the corner' is the best. The performance of the four teenagers who play the main pupils is genuinely stunning, as is the performance of the stone-cold enforcer Chris Partlow, one of the most chilling characters ever seen on big or small screen. Many moments in this season will pull on the heart strings. No matter who your favourite character though, by the end you will realise there is only one - the city of Baltimore itself. I don't think I've ever seen anything so thought-provoking, heart-breaking and hilarious all rolled into one. You know that book that you read every year? That CD you can listen to no matter what your mood? That movie you bought on VHS, DVD, 25-year Special Edition DVD and then blu-ray and holds pride of place on your shelf? This is the TV equivalent. I can genuinely see this becoming an annual watch for me, almost a rite-of-passage, something I just have to do. To sum up: I cannot recommend The Wire enough. It is as good as anything I have ever seen, heard or played - TV, film, music, games, this quite possibly tops the lot. It is no surprise that it has a rating of 9.7 on IMBD, with the highest film having a 9.2. It is without a doubt the greatest TV show I have ever seen. The Sopranos paved the way for making TV a genuinely artistic medium for story telling, but if in the next 100 years The Wire is topped, I will be very surprised.
J**N
Hardwired
The Wire has garnered more appreciation than any other television series, including an amazing 9.7 stars at IMDB. But how much of that is hype? Its predecessor Homicide, the life and times of the Baltimore homicide division (broadcasted 1993-98), was based on a book of David Simon, the creator and co-writer of The Wire, and was awarded 9 stars at IMDB. Does that mean that it's almost as good as The Wire? No, it doesn't, so IDBM's star system is fallible. Homicide is a decent series in itself; one could say that it's Baltimore's own Law & Order version (there were even cross-overs with that series), and some of the storylines and characters (like Frank Pembleton, Meldrick Lewis, Al Giordello, Tim Bayliss) are absolute great. But in the end it remained a "crime-of-the-week" series, solid but not particular outstanding, and its overrated stars must be seen more as a hommage to The Wire than that it has earned them on its own merites. The Wire on the other hand, couldn't be more different. It's also situated in Baltimore, David Simon's hometown, but there the simillarities stop. This is storytelling the like of which has seldom entered the small screen. In a mere 60 episodes (compared with the 122 of Homicide) this series show the crumbling decay of urban life from all perspectives - the police, the drug scene, the politics, the corruption, the media, even the school system. It is, literally, breathtaking in its scope. Part of its stunning success is the stellar performance of an amazing cast of almost unknown actors. Part of it is the cinematographic quality of the shows, almost all shot at locations in Baltimore. But most of it is the storytelling. No "crime of the week" or "body of the week" here. This is in effect a 60-episode movie. There is no "Previous in...", there is only a story that rolls on and on, asking the utmost concentration of its audience. You just can't hook into it at any given episode, you really need to start watching from the beginning. That's why it's probably better on DVD than TV. And HBO must be admired for sticking up to his guns! But here you have it, an epic tale in which these writers, directors and actors brought alive the lives of the corner boys, the dealers, the detectives from the squad who try to bring down some of Baltimore's drug czars via wiretapping (hence the title), the top of City Hall, from the Mayor down to the police brass trying to obfusciate the crime rate figures, the city councillors, congressmen, senators, governors, school teachers, the harbour union, journalists, the life and times of people, not just standard characters. It seems impossible to touch so many subjects in just 60 hours, but almost each character has been drawn in sharp lines with a depth that is almost Dickensian in ints intensity. It starts like a cop & robbers show, but it ends as an immense tapestry of people and events that leaves an audience by times gasping for breath. Where have we seen portraits of users and dealers and corrupt police and politicians in such a brutal and yet compassionate way? Many of them are deeply flawed but this series show that they are indeed people, and that is maybe the series' greatest strength. US television series on the whole are not particularly well endowed with storytelling qualities - the reason why West Wing, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Farscape or Carnivàle jump out immediately. But The Wire tops them all. Shakespeare, Dickens and Simons rolled in one. There is one drawback; as one reviewer moaned, "Watching this show has ruined a lot of other television shows and movies for me." Well, if that's the price one has to pay, it's a bargain!
J**.
Schlichtweg die beste Cop-Serie die ich kenne. Hervorragend recherchiert und konsequent umgesetzt. Viel Action im herkömmlichen Sinne wird man hier nicht finden, - die Action findet im Kopf statt. Großartig !!!
E**A
"The Wire" è un incredibile capolavoro di scrittura, recitazione, ambientazione, un trattato sociologico e una drammaturgia eccezionale per umanesimo, lucidità, impegno e attenzione ai dettagli. Ero partita estremamente prevenuta verso una trama poliziesca che non è il mio genere, ma qui il genere poliziesco diventa parte della vita vera. La visione è consigliatissima! Purtroppo, in Italia è distribuita solo da Sky, con audio originale o doppiaggio, senza sottotitoli in nessuna lingua. Io ho un C2 di listening inglese, ma senza sottotitoli l'audio in baltimorese stretto per me è 95% incomprensibile; il doppiaggio italiano non è malfatto, ma non è l'originale. Questa bella edizione completa permette finalmente di godere dell'audio originale + sottotitoli, che è - per me - l'unico modo serio di guardare una serie. Preciso che i sottotitoli in italiano non sono presenti (io non li userei comunque). Funziona in Italia (è regione 2, edizione inglese). Come annunciato, è usato (un po' ammaccato in 2 scatole su 5) ma i DVD sono in ottime condizioni. D'altra parte, nuovo ha prezzi proibitivi...
S**C
...and a box set of The Wire. I'm sure I can't say anything about this series that hasn't been said already ... it's a must watch.
D**D
As you likely already know, this is considered to be one of the greatest television shows of all time by many... I belong to that group. The series was lightning in a bottle, encapsulating street life in the drug and murder filled streets of Baltimore, in a way not seen before. Though dated in some regards (in 2024),I plan to continue to rewatch this series, start-to-finish, a few times a year... And in other news, large multi-disc series' packaging continues to be a tremendous pain in the buttocks.
C**S
Excelente pack de la mejor serie de la historia. Es la edición inglesa UK, pero está en español entre otros. -audio: ingles, francés, alemán, español españa, español latino, y otros (danés y finlandés creo) -subtitulos, ingles, francés, alemán, español españa, español latino (aunque son los mismos) y otros, La forma ideal de ver ésta estupenda series es con audio original inglés y subtitulos en español. Aunque para los que le cueste más, pues que se pongan el audio en español. Confirmado, versión inglesa UK pero con audio y subtítulos en español españa. La calidad de video y audio es excelente, se nota la remasterización. El pack contiene 5 estuches individuales con cada una de las temporadas, y dentro de cada estuche los 4 discos con todos los episodios. El listado de episodios está escrito (en inglés) en la parte interna de la caratula de cada estuche. Recomendado al 100%, es exactamente igual que la versión española (salvo por la cajita cuyo texto y sinopsis de la serie está en ingles, detalle irrelevante), pero es que su precio es la mitad que la versión española. Así que ni lo dudes.
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