Looking ahead to the final season of 'The Shield' | The Watcher| Chicago Tribune:
Whatever else 2008 brings us in the realm of television, there’s already a reason for a degree of sadness: We’ll see three great series begin their final runs next year. “The Wire” and “Battlestar Galactica” kick off their last seasons in early 2008, and some time during that year, we’ll also see the seventh and final batch of episodes of “The Shield,” the gripping series about a group of morally challenged cops in Los Angeles. thought I'd noted this alrdy, seems not.

It’s not too early to begin to assess what “The Shield” has done for television: Aside from “The Sopranos,” there isn’t a cable series that has been more influential on the medium in the last decade. huh! not The Wire ??
It’s not just that “The Shield’s” documentary aesthetic on dvd commentary of The Wire director of 3.11 said walking line btw pure documentary style (wh said was used on Homicide) and elegance and its innovative directors have migrated to a number of other television shows, it’s that the taut, rollercoaster storytelling and the indelible character studies that creator Shawn Ryan and his writing staff have given to the world are still – five years after the show debuted – the gold standard that many new dramas aspire to equal. again, not The Wire ??

Laura Holden said she watched all the previous seasons of “The Shield” in the space of a few weeks in order to understand where her character fit in.
“I was blown away on every level -- the acting, the directing, the cinematography,” Holden said. “They’re so daring with the subject matter and where they choose to go. … I feel like I’m watching a fabulous independent film every week. So I feel very honored to be here.”
And the makeup requirements aren’t onerous, she noted with a laugh.“A lot of other shows have a tendency to try to glamorize the characters,” Holden said. “Working on this show, they like it if you have circles under your eyes. They like the gritty camera angles. It’s all real. There’s nothing ‘pretty’ about it, which is what makes it so cool.”

--The Emmys have looked over tons of shows and though The Shield won early awards it has been glossed over for The Sopranos. In my opinion, and we all have our own, this show is far superior, the plotlines all come together, every character, even the minor ones all have a part to play in, and you can feel the tension that builds every week. The only other shows that does this for me are The Wire and Nip Tuck.
--By far the best show on TV. There has never been a character like Vic Mackey, so evil to bad people, good heart when it counts, break the law to help someone break the law and kill to save himself and his team.

David Simon in The Wire dvd feature q&a says only HBO, no other channel incl FX would do The Wire. is The Shield less dark, real, demanding? or did it come later, after the raves for The Wire changed readiness at FX? David Simon also said that Oz was really the important show for making possible new things on telev ~ first original programming HBO ~ did he say first? was it before The Sopranos? wh was the first I knew about, followed by Six Feet Under, I think.

Oz (TV series) - Wkp: Oz was the first one-hour dramatic television series to be produced by HBO. The show, which aired for six seasons (1997-2003), was created by Tom Fontana and produced by Barry Levinson. who also did Homicide, right? on NBC, based on book of same title by David Simon.
Barry Levinson - Wkp: producer of film and television. born 1942, grew up in Baltimore. attended Amer Univ in DC. began his career as a director with Diner (1982), for which he had also written the script and which earned him a Best Screenplay Oscar nomination. Diner was the first of a series of films set in the Baltimore of Levinson's youth. The other films in this series were Tin Men (1987), the turn-of-the-century immigrant family saga Avalon, more recent Liberty Heights (1999). All four movies were written and directed by Barry Levinson himself; for the last two he also acted as producer.
Other notable films in his directing career were The Natural (1984), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) and Toys (1992), both with Robin Williams, and Bugsy (1991) with Warren Beatty. His biggest hit, both critically and financially, was Rain Man. He also has a television production company with Tom Fontana (The Levinson/Fontana Company) and served as executive producer for a number of their series, including Homicide: Life on the Street (which ran on NBC from 1993-1999) and the HBO prison drama Oz.
is a minority owner of the Baltimore Orioles baseball team.

The Shield - Wkp: Season 1 premiered March 12, 2002. The Shield has finished its 6th season. Although this season was supposed to be the last, The Shield has been renewed for its 7th and final season. so, premiered a few months before...
The Wire (TV series) - Wkp: The Wire premiered on June 2, 2002, with 50 episodes airing over the course of its first four seasons. HBO has ordered a fifth season, which Simon has said will be the show's last.