“The Wire” Is Still The Best Show of All Time

It’s essential to still see each person as human first, and everything else second

Photo by Brendan Beale on Unsplash

“The Wire” is the best show of all time because it makes you a better person.

That’s the headline I wrote four years ago for an obscure college publication. And it’s a headline I still stand by today, 20 years after HBO’s “The Wire” first aired.

First, contrary to popular belief, “The Wire” is not just a cop show. And if it is a cop show, it’s a pretty bad one by conventional standards. For its time, it was remarkably accurate in how it depicted a police department’s dysfunction.

Some of the earliest episodes of the show contain terribly incompetent police officers performing unspeakable acts of brutality, and a police lieutenant coaching an officer on how to cover up the brutality. In an era before iPhones and everyone with a phone having access to a digital camera, it’s frightening to think about what cops got away with and still get away with.

But “The Wire” taught me empathy and compassion, particularly through very morally conflicted characters, characters who struggled through addiction or just making the right choice in a problematic bureaucratic system. It’s a show about how good individuals with even the best moral…