Jonathan Abrams, 2018
Abrams borrowed a style from James Miller and presented the inside story of The Wire as an oral history. These books are always smooth reads allowing the reader to chew off large chunks of pages quickly. He got just about every actor and behind the scenes player to participate and share their views on the making of the show.
The Wire is one of my all time favorite TV shows – one that gets an easy 5/5 for me in our imaginary TV category. I wanted to give this book a better rating but just couldn’t. I’m glad I read it but as such a big fan of the TV show I’m not exactly unbiased.
As the book makes clear, if you watched The Wire you were a “smart motherfucker”. Someone who reads books. I thought I got The Wire when I was watched it, but reading this book really put words to and deepened my understanding of the message it presented. At it’s best, this book serves that purpose.
My problem is it’s just too repetitive. I felt the interviews emphasized the same points over and over again and too many of the subjects’ overlapping opinions made it into the book. As an oral history, I think that a single 5 season series just can’t come close to the same amount of worthy content as the 30 year histories of SNL and ESPN could for theirs.
If you loved the TV show this book is a must read. If not, probably not worth it. But seriously, why haven’t you watched the show? Let’s get on that.
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