The Wire

I don't know how I managed to do this, but one of the best crime series I've ever seen was on TV and I didn't know about it.

The Wire has been feted as the best TV crime show ever ... I don't know about that, but it is surely up there with the best.

And, in the best tradition of British TV, it's over after five seasons; unusual for US TV.

I don't think I've seen a TV series which so examines the desperate and decomposing world of inner city degradation and post-industrial wastelands which spawn the intense, tragic and inevitable tales of desperation, addiction and murder.

Although the setting is Baltimore, these events can easily be picked up and set in Liverpool, Marseille or Naples.

Eulogies to The Wire often portray it as allegorical. I don't know ... to me it seems all too real.