the wire --(at least) one cool thing:
after watching the the first 3 episodes of season 1, I'm hooked. The Wire is an HBO dramatic series that provides an inside look at the Baltimore Police Department. Less famous than fellow HBO productions The Sopranos and Six Feet Under, The Wire is no less excellent. Shot on location in Baltimore, the show is gritty, nuanced and highly textured. Its creators are David Simon, an ex-reporter from the Baltimore Sun whose first book provided the inspiration for the NBC series Homicide, and Ed Burns, a 20 year veteran of the Baltimore PD.
The strength of the program is that characters on both sides of the drug war are developed, and the acting is uniformly strong. Dominic West does have a stand-out role as Det. Jim McNulty, a character about who his partner, William “Bunk” Moreland, wonders, “How is it you always have the world pissed off at you?” It must be his Irish charm. ah
The Wire commands your attention, but the careful viewer is rewarded with masterful dialog and a strongly compelling story arc. commentary to 2nd episode director just complimented (again) David Simon on the dialogue he writes and said It's one thing to tell a great story, it's another thing to give the people in that story great voices.
update: Early this morning I finished watching season 1, and it is amazing television. I was very positive in my original post but, in retrospect, I should have raved more. Every aspect of the show, from the opening credits that reference Francis Ford Copola’s The Conversation
ah ha - the director in commentary to epis 2 The Detail mentioned this... what is the reference?
to the conclusion of the 13 epsisode story, is meticulously crafted.
Even the show’s theme song (a cover of Tom Waits - Way Down in the Hole by the Blind Boys of Alabama) is inspired.
If you like police dramas you will love The Wire. that's the thing I dont like police dramas I can't follow them and dont get that into the suspense.. this may be even harder to follow (less spoon-fed) but worth it for its finesse..

Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 wiretap masterpiece. - By Benjamin Strong - Slate Magazine: Francis Ford Coppola's wiretap thriller The Conversation premiered on April 7, 1974, four days before the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed 42 tapes from the Oval Office, where President Richard Nixon had been secretly recording conversations throughout his administration. The timing was purely serendipitous for Coppola. The writer-director had wanted to make a movie about the acutely modern paranoia that audio surveillance technology was enabling long before the summer of 1972, when Nixon campaign operatives were collared at the Watergate Hotel attempting to bug the headquarters of the Democratic National Party.
The Conversation opens with mercenary listener Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) eavesdropping on a cryptic exchange...