The Wire: Return of one of TV’s greatest creations

The Wire is one of the greatest, most addictive cop shows in TV history. Catch it from today, ad-free, on Showcase.

British actor Dominic West plays a Baltimore cop in The Wire.

Television pick of the day: The Wire, Showcase, 5.30pm.

Here’s another chance to catch up with one of the most famous TV series ever made, starring Dominic West and Idris Elba. It returns tonight from the first episode, the crime show described by devotees as being as addictive as the crack cocaine sold by its protagonists. Yet on local television David Simon’s The Wire was like a ghost ship, mysteriously coming and going in the early hours; the Mary Celeste of the airwaves. Made by cable network HBO, the drama first came to Australia a few years ago accompanied by extraordinary critical acclaim in the US but unaccountably aired in erratic, late-night slots on Nine. It drifted around local pay channels for a while, too, lost in a Bermuda Triangle of ignorance, distrust and apathy.

Here, no one seemed to care much about the slow-burning cult show, ostensibly about Baltimore cops trying to trap black drug barons with wiretaps but really, critics said, a coruscating expose of US society.

When I occasionally caught random episodes, just before dawn, the show seemed so disjointed I could understand why local networks abandoned it. It was too dense and confusing, and the profane street dialogue was desperately in need of subtitles and a glossary. It was only after I watched the box sets of The Wire’s five series from the start that I understood the acclaim.

Tonight’s first chapter introduces central characters and situations in the inner-city narcotics trade and its policing in Baltimore, Maryland, or in local street argot, “Body-More, Murdaland’’. So if you want to discover why The Wire is regarded as one of TV’s greatest creations, watch the first of its 60 episodes on Showcase, and devour them as they are shown in sequence, commercial-free. Don’t even think of taking a phone call or going to the fridge when they screen. It’s a visceral drama with distinctively long plot arcs, dense webs of characters and astute social analysis. Be warned, the first episode is a little unforgiving.