Every Season Of The Wire Ranked From Worst To Best
Note: This post contains spoilers for “The Wire.”
Is “The Wire” still one of the greatest TV shows of all time? David Simon’s sprawling, complex portrait of Baltimore has appeared on multiple “best of” lists over the years, popping up near the top of masterpiece-filled rankings from outlets like Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, Empire, and more. The HBO series, which really couldn’t have worked before that channel’s dominance in early 2000s, currently ranks sixth-highest of all time on IMDb (it’s beat out only by “Breaking Bad,” “Chernobyl,” “Band of Brothers,” and two “Planet Earth” shows), and despite never winning an Emmy, it’s earned a Peabody, DGA and WGA awards, and a spot on the American Film Institute’s Television Programs of The Year list three different times.
“The Wire” is no doubt a work of storytelling genius, and much of its tremendous effect is cumulative. The series starts at the street level of Maryland’s biggest city, examining the effects of drugs and gang life before refocusing its attention — first on the city’s ports, then its politics, then its school system, and finally, on its media. By series’ end, Simon has weaved a tale of contrasting characters and disparate parts, all of which come together to hold a cracked mirror up to America’s broken and corrupt institutions. Far from an anthology, the series follows characters from its first season — cops and criminals alike — through to their often-tragic ends.
Which parts of “The Wire” hold up best today, and which feel like its weakest links? As one of the show’s chess-reference epigraphs puts it in season 1, “all the pieces matter,” but it’s fair to say that some matter more than others.