I scored the companion book The Wire: Truth Be Told for Xmas, and just started hacking into it. Its great. Beyond the sypnosis for every episode and a season overview, its got a bunch of articles on different facets of the show and interviews with the creators and actors.
FWIW, I agree with Celebel (great post BTW) Sure Soprano's is/was awesome. Sure it covers the "Italian American Experience", as it may be. But The Wire tells a story far more typical of most big cities. Sure its "Bal'more", but its far more relevant to inner city life anywhere than Soprano's was. It paints a more universal picture.
was set more in the suburbs anyway.
Meh. I know better than to try to argue the merits of
The Wire over
The Sopranos with you...
...but Im gonna do it anyway
Sure
Sopranos captured the suburban zeitgeist, even managing to make an otherwise boring as shit notion into a compelling series. As Chase himself has said (and Im paraphrasing here) the mafia element in the show was a vehicle to explore latter day suburban life. Truth be told, its a bit of a one trick pony.
The Wire in comparison explores so much
more. Beyond the obvious themes of each season (the scourge of drugs, shady politics and corruption, failing institutions and the degredation of modern journalsim), Season Two in particular (and the others to a differing extent) touched on white flight, urban decay, gentrification and, however briefly, life in the suburbs. Unlike
The Sopranos though, it doesn't need to make it a major theme to get the points across.
Advantage: The Wire. Every time.
