TV Tuesday 9/22 - The Wire

My husband and I usually watch two TV shows each evening (and sometimes Jeopardy, too!). That's our time together, and we enjoy watching favorite shows. I also watch something on my own (something with no action or suspense - ha ha!) at lunchtime.

So, I thought why not add some TV reviews as well as my weekly movie reviews? So, here we go - TV Tuesday! Each week, I will highlight a different TV show. Between TV seasons the past few weeks (and with me so sick), my husband and I were searching for something new to watch, so we settled on a decade-old HBO series that we'd heard great things about (and that is available for free now on Amazon Prime):

We started watching The Wire last week, and we are completely hooked now! The show takes place n Baltimore (a city close to us) and focuses on the drug trade in the projects there. Both the Homicide and Narcotics departments of the Baltimore Police Department are interested in a particular drug dealer who controls a whole area and whom they suspect is responsible for at least a dozen murders. A judge notices this activity and requests that the Baltimore PD set up a special commission to take down this gang leader. The police department heads aren't thrilled with this order, so they reluctantly comply, donating some of their worst dead weight officers to the cause. This ragtag group is given a basement office and sets out to try to catch one of the city's most notorious and untouchable criminals.

Dominic West does a great job as Detective McNaulty, the Homicide detective that started this whole thing and is completely obsessed with catching this guy. Two of our favorite actors from Treme (another amazing show!), Wendell Pierce and Clarke Peters, star as other detectives, and Sonja Sohn is excellent as the lead Narcotics officer on the case. The show alternates between the points of view of the people involved in the drug trade (some of them just kids) and the police officers investigating, so you see both perspectives, as well as the officers' private lives. The show has really grown on us, and by the third episode, we were liking it more and more. The acting is excellent, the gritty setting is very realistic (luckily, we haven't seen much of this side of Baltimore before), and the twisty, intricate plot has sucked us in completely. Given the subject matter (and its origins on HBO), there is some violence and lots of swearing. So if that bothers you, this show is probably not for you. If it doesn't bother you, then the scene where McNaulty and his partner investigate a crime scene for 10 minutes using only the f-word is pretty hilarious!

That's what we're watching this week. What TV shows are you enjoying in between the summer and fall seasons?