“It’s not television, it’s HBO”, was one of the well-known slogans of the premium cable signal that today evolved into HBOMax. Home Box Office, its full name, was and is one of the television channels with the best image and a search for different stories, with a development and a language that wanted to distance itself from the average products of that time. Only there, mother channel of series like The Sopranos, Six Feet Under Y Sex and the Citythe idea of David Simon that years later would be considered one of the best fictions in the history of television: TheWire.
First they rejected her for being a police officer. HBO did not want to repeat what the big American television networks were doing. Nevertheless, TheWire it meant an opportunity to compete with the other signals in their field, doing the same as them but better. That was the justification that Simon gave to Chris Albrecht, President of the company, to give him the green light for a first season. The series began precisely doing what the rest of the channels did: a policeman. But with another search, one that really reflects what was happening on the streets, in this case, of Baltimore. Simon knew the city and its secrets and hideouts well from his 15 years as a journalist at the baltimore sunthe local newspaper. The series was not just a police, it was a political and social drama, a western, a series not to go, at times a comedy and even a fiction about the media. It is that and more, with a number of characters as rich as they are memorable.
TheWire He just turned 20 years since his debut. It was on June 2, 2002. In these two decades, his reputation continued to rise and the reproductions multiplied. In fact, with the arrival of hbo max to Latin America, TheWire It was one of the most chosen products in the first months. This data is no coincidence, since fiction appears an infinite number of times in the lists of the best series in the history of television. In a recent BBC poll, it was also crowned the best series of the 21st century. 206 journalists from 43 countries participated in the election and made a list of 100 that leads the HBO series.
Simon was the creator of TheWire next to the ex-policeman Ed Burns. Between them they knew the streets of Baltimore from their previous experiences. That’s where the books came from. Homicide Y The corner. The initial idea was to portray, through the Baltimore stories, how a large part of the United States was not the promised land that was talked about in the news and the one that the current government wanted to sell.
Through the five seasons, the fiction addresses different layers of society: the street, drug trafficking, union disputes, illegal trafficking, police and political corruption, education and the media. All in a fine network through its characters, none of the protagonists of the series, except for some in certain seasons. In several interviews, both creators highlighted that the feelings that led them to make this fiction were “anger and frustration at seeing that the system cannot be changed”, a constant that is repeated in the fictions of David Simon as in the recent The city is our and others like Show Me a Hero, The Plot Against America, Tremeetc.
Regarding its impact, TheWire It was always a series discussed due to the lack of awards and popularity. The Emmys never nominated it for Outstanding Drama Series, only receiving two nominations in the writing category for its Season 3 episodes “Middle Ground,” featuring an extraordinary Idris Elba as Michael K. Williams, and “-30- ”, the end of the series. None of the statuettes were taken. Over time, TheWire It was adding followers thanks to the constant appearances in the different lists of the recommended series.
It is true that the series did not achieve the popularity of breaking bad neither lostneither of Game of Thrones either The Walking Dead, but it paved the way for many others to tell similar stories or dare to present different formats. At the end of the day, as in the story that the series tells, it is almost impossible to change a mechanism that is established, that works and that generates profits for those who make the decisions. TheWire he was encouraged to show something else and not in any way.
He also created endearing characters from Stringer Bell (Idris Elbe) and Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris), to Baltimore’s Robin Wood Omar Little (Michael K Williams), through the self-destructive detective McNulty (Dominic West), Bubbles (Andrew Royo) inspired by a real figure, Kima (sonja son), councilman Carcetti (Aidan Gillen) and the ruthless Marlo (Jamie Hector). Without a doubt, TheWire built a story that did not leave indifferent anyone who has been encouraged to visit Baltimore for the five seasons proposed by David Simon. An impossible story to leave.
The five seasons of TheWire are complete in hbo max and this weekend a marathon of the entire series will be broadcast on the signals of HBO.
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