1. The Sopranos

2. Deadwood

3. True Detective(season 1)

4. Rome

5. Hannibal

6. The Knick

Comfort show: Red Dwarf

I'm not even joking man, if it wasn't for any of the violence or swearing I would think I'm watching a completely episodic crime show like CSI at parts.

It feels like a network police show that wanted the exceed the boundaries of what it was but never fully could.

Man I don't know because I went from watching The Sopranos which felt like a timeless masterpiece of drama/comedy to The Wire which was barely a step above daytime TV.

You think about what acting powerhouses James Galdolfini, Edie Falco, Lorraine Braco, Michael Imperioli, Nancy Marchand, Frank Vincent, Dominic Chianese, Steve Buscemi, Joe Pantoliano, etc all are and then look at The Wire....

The only actors that stuck out to me in The Wire were Idris Elba(who unfortunately felt underwritten) and Michael Kenneth Williams. These were shows that came out at the same time and differ in acting and to a lesser extent writing capabilities a lot.

Maybe but I'll list out the flaws I had with it more concisely

1. I hate Tom Waits(personal opinion)

2. The acting on the "white cast" for the most part was lacklustre, Dominic West in particular could not carry his character. When you write a character this flawed you need really good writing and acting to keep the audience invested. West is ok but he is no John Hamm, James Gandolfini, Bryan Cranston, etc. He's kind of a charisma drain.

3. Leaving "events" or major plot points out of the series is a mistake for a multi-season show. Watching The Wire past the first season is real slog because the stakes aren't raised, the characters are not facing some new threat or something. There are shows like Deadwood and The Sopranos that are light on plot but even they have something driving them forward, raising the stakes, things progress(or regress) from season to season.

No because I love most well received TV shows.

The Wire feels so disjointed and wooden it's hard to care about anything.

No, not really.

For me a morally bad character can still be likable or at the very least entertaining.

I didn't get that from The Wire.

I didn't like any of the actors except the gangster cast, which unsurprisingly actually went on to have a career.

Daytime TV, enough said

Yeah I didn't even hate the first season, I just thought it ok-good.

I just genuinely do not understand the acclaim I have been hearing for years. Other than the show just being a landmark at the time.

All those you listed are the main side characters though....

I think it's a decent show, I just don't think it is great.

That might be ok for a movie, but a TV show with like 40 minute episodes will leave you wanting more.

Because it was not just about not getting into it, within the first few episodes of the first season you notice some serious flaws.

Overall Michael Kenneth Williams and Idris Elba took the show home for me but still, not the best show of all time by a long run.

Dude they literally mention 9/11 multiple time in the show, what am I trolling about?

This isn't a documentary though, it's a fictional TV show.

If you are going to make morally reprehensible characters then you have to give them more depth and personality than they did. At least for a long running TV show.

If they are not interesting and they are not good people, then what is left?

>Ok, I read a bunch of you're criticisms in other comments. You call it copaganda in some and then complain about not being able to relate to the police officer characters in other posts.

Yeah it's weird right? I'm saying that in spite of the characters being so terrible that you are still expected to root for them, in a weird way making it almost like an "ends justify the means" mentality the creators are pushing.

Which post 9/11 would not surprise me.

I want characters with depth, The Wire has too many characters that are "bad" but not good.

I can only assume that the characters in The Sopranos are just far better written and acted.

I didn't find The Wire characters compelling for the most part so maybe that makes their worse attributes stick out more.

No what should make him compelling to watch is the complexity of the character, in this case he's kind of a wooden scumbag.

There is nothing to relate to him with. No heart.

I found the characters to be too wooden so that their bad attributes were the only things that stood out.

There was no heart to them.

Nah man the characters in this show are just underwritten, they followed in the footsteps of The Sopranos trying to make likable or amusing scumbags but they just made scumbags.

Unlikeable characters without redeeming qualities is a flaw to me.

Even Tony Soprano does seem to legitimately care for his family, and the show makes it known that somewhere within in him there is still good although much farther down than the bad.

Almost all the characters in The Wire are underwritten the the only things that stick out are the bad and unsympathetic moments.

>I mean the closest thing you have to a main character cheats on his wife, endangers his children, fucks over his co-workers, illegally detains people, drives drunk, and is exceedingly unapologetic about all of it.

Yeah but I'm not gonna watch an HBO series sympathizing with Derek Chauvin, am I?

If you want to make a police show where the3 police are that shitty and have them as main characters, it needs to be an almost lawless setting like Deadwood or Justified.