andreikirilenkotattoo on TV: Down to 'The Wire'

"The Wire" is officially back tonight, and since I've traditionally written about the show in our roomier Sunday section, that's where the final preview goes:

An old saying goes that tragedy plus time equals comedy. David Simon, creator of HBO's "The Wire," believes in a different equation, one where the passage of time is either a negative or a non-factor. In Simon's Baltimore, comedy and tragedy exist side by side, constantly feeding back and forth to each other. If the very contemporary events on "The Wire" - only the greatest drama in TV history - weren't so tragic, they'd be hilarious. And if they weren't so often funny, they'd be intolerably sad.

Over the years, so much critical praise has been lavished on "The Wire" - an unflinching look at the decaying state of American cities, in cop show drag - that the show too often sounds like homework. But the series has always been as much black comedy as bleak drama.

To read the full thing, click here. Meanwhile, as I mentioned in the comments to the Great Moments thread, I realized I couldn't really do such a list justice within the space and language restrictions available to me in the paper, so for the sidebar, I wrote about how David Simon uses the opening scene of each premiere to lay out that season's themes. To read that, click here. Back tonight at 10 with the first episode review.