wo The Wire A Dramanc Series for HBO Wnitten By David Simon. HQ l= when Trs or out Teen) You Cre (O08 J ose EF ~ ov ot PEP jeg THIN TuteA ee yp 17k 6 September, 2000OVERVIEWTHE WIRE A one-hour drama for HBO ‘The Wire 1s a drama that offers muluple meanings and arguments. It will be, in the strictest sense, a police procedural set in the drug culture of an American rust-belt city, a cops- and:-players story that exists within the same vernacular as other television fare. But as with the best HBO series, The Wire will be far more than a cop show, and to the extent that 1t breaks new ground, it will do so because of larger, universal themes that have more to do with the human condition, the nature of the American city and, indeed, the national culture. becomes art when 1 stands as more than.a mob story but asa treatise on the Amencan faifuly. Oz)1s at its best when it rises beyond the framework of a prisomstory and finds commonalities:betweer' that vironment and our own, external World So, too, should The Wire be judged not merely as a descendant of Homicide or NYPD Blue, but as a vehucle for making ibout the American éxfy and even the Ameri ‘The grand theme here is nothing less than a national existentialism: Its a folie story set_) arfud the dysfariction aiid indifference of an.urban depaitméiit -- one that has failed to come t6 terms with the permanent nature of urban drug culture, one in which thinking cops, and thinking street players, must make their way independent of simple explanations. - In thas sense, The Ware extends the cop-drama universe beyond-the us-against-them heroics of NYPD Blue, even past the flawed-but-still-viable famuly of the Homicide.squad room. Visually, this drama will be the next generation in what has become classic American television fare, and as such, 1t will be hard for other police procedurals to ignore the amplications ‘Structurally, each season of The Ware ~- be it nine or thirteen episodes -- exists as a stand- alone journey Some characters may progress to the following season for continuty; most others will have their stories resolved 1n a single season (a design that allows for greater-lautudexn casting)> Each story are imiist provide episodes that stand alone as dramauic television, but at the same tume the whole must make a cogent argument about the national conditton, using the streets and stones of one city as a microcosm - Each story arc ultimately gravitates.toward-one common feature, prolénged=> whretap/surverllance‘effort (hence the tutle) that reveals an ‘and-connections:in the-urban landscapé that would ordinanly pasS-aS unseen to even the best'street-cops And each wiretap ultumately proves as discomfiting tothe authonties as at-does to thosesargeted This 1s a world an which kriowledge 1a 4 double-edged sword” ‘The style of ihe show can be called hyper-realism It should be shot¢Y6mam‘and Kand7 7 ©"? ‘held, though the coming video technologies may argue for something even more experimental But more than just visually, The Ware ~- by using precise geography, a fully conceptualized city and police bureaucracy, and story developments culled from actual casework -- should present self as something so clearly real that the traditional conceits of police melodrama are seen as such Nothing should happen on screen that hasn’t in some fashion happened on the streets, and the show will uuilize a series of yereran detectives and Baltumore street figures for-story-lines and