Hot Off The Press

The critically acclaimed HBO drama The Wire returns in two weeks for its fifth and final season and already tongues are wagging in anticipation. The ground-breaking series that tells stories more like a first rate novel than a television show, will cap off its run by focusing in on how the media covers—or doesn’t cover—the issues faced by most major cities.

The Wire uses Baltimore as its backdrop and in season one, it explored the drug trade and the cat and mouse game between dealers and city police. Season two continued the tale using the city’s waterfront to illustrate the disappearance of good paying jobs for dock workers and working class people in general and the struggle just to survive. City Hall, government indifference and the need for political reform was tackled in season three, while the educational system and how neglect of our young people breeds the next generation of desperate survivors was the focus last season, in what some consider the best one of all.

Feeling he has told all the stories he has to tell, producer David Simon has rejected offers to prolong the series just for the sake of keeping it on the air, and in so doing, has kept standards high. Familiar faces from the first four seasons will return along with several new characters in the role of newspaper reporters. Season five begins January 6.