Link of the Day: The Wire’s Opening Credits
SPOILER ALERT: Do not click on the link below unless you’ve already watched the great, recently departed TV masterpiece, The Wire:
It’s a three-year-old blog post, yet it does as good a job of getting to the soul of The Wire as any piece on the Internets that I can remember (h/t Ruz).
The House Next Door blog examines the first four seasons of The Wire through the prism of the evolving, and gripping, opening credits.
On Season 4:
It’s still early in the fourth season’s run of new episodes, but already it is apparent that we’ve entered unfamiliar territory, for both viewer and show. What was once a police procedural has expanded in scope yet again, now exploring the gestation of criminal behavior and the corruption of the most sacred of institutions: government, school, even the family unit and childhood itself are tainted by the trickle down effects of compromise, power struggle, and the seemingly unavoidable magnetism of the corners. Once again, the creators of The Wire have risen to the heady challenge of conveying all of this in the opening credits, taking the art form to an even higher level. It’s filmmaking at its most concise and compelling.
There’s lots more where that came from. Junkies of The Wire (so to speak) should definitely check it out.
