Like a bird on The Wire

We are fully immersed in The Wire season 4. In fact I'm just waiting for SS to come home so we can watch the finale. What is about this show? It has garnered massive acclaim, critical and popular. It's the writing, the acting, the development and richness of story. And I can't think of any other show where there are so many interesting characters ... Bubbles, Omar, Stringer Bell, McNulty, Michael, Prez, Bunk, I could go on and on. There's just no show that has so many rounded, fascinating, growing and idiosyncratic characters.

The Guardian has a good sum up of the show's appeal:

It is this careful development of character and plot that has seen The Wire rightly compared to great epic novels. Initially billed as a cop show (a label that Ed Burns's writing partner David Simon describes as a "necessary Trojan Horse"), it bears no resemblance to any cop show you might have seen.

Damn straight. I'm not particularly enamoured of cop shows, but The Wire is a world of its own. See also their 9 reasons why ...

I've also just finished reading Phallic Frenzy - Ken Russell and his films by Joseph Lanza. Long been a fan of 'Gothic' ... might need to explore further (especially 'Salome's Last Dance' - as a Beardsley/Wilde fan I should totally be up on that). There's a good selection of movies directed by Ken at Alices.