The Wire – How Have You Not Seen It Already…

Slow moving at first, but preserver for 2-3 episodes and you'll be hooked. Set on the streets of Baltimore this police/crime drama is gritty and compulsive viewing. You quickly get to know the complex characters and find the good guys perhaps aren't so good, and the bad guys are more complicated than you first thought.

Series 2 is one of the best in my opinion. Set on the waterfront, this series focuses on how the gangs use shipping to Baltimore to smuggle drugs and commit other illegal activity. The series focuses on the Waterfront union, and how after years of recession and hard times the union leaders have become wedded to the gangs. In this series you really get to see how the city's economic infrastructure has collapsed, and how in this vacuum crime thrives.

By series three we are getting to learn much more about the characters. Their strengths, their flaws and the complexities. The problems aren't getting any better, and the internal politics both within the police and the gangs increasingly add pressure.

Series 4 is largely set in the Baltimore School system. We see how failure to adequately fund and resource basic public services like education in the city has let down young people. We see how organised crime operate within this, and how young people are captured into gang culture at a young age.

We also learn more about the cities politics in this series, which leads to the final series

In the final series politics and crime become interwoven. Corruption is rife at all levels of government, and those trying to make change often find they are forced to act outside the rules.

No spoilers, but the ending is probably my favourite. Its realistic, and believable.