That's the gap between the finale of season 4 and the first episode of season 5 of The Wire (FX Monday 10pm) which aired this week. The Guardian called it "The best cop show you've never seen" and I am very inclined to agree.

It's that rare thing in television, a series that credits the viewer with a modicum of intelligence. It won't spoon feed you with background information or explain the situation; it throws you right out on the street along with the characters to sink or swim just like the inhabitants of West Baltimore that the series follows.

The creation of David Simon (writer of Homicide: Life on the Streets), the show owes more to an epic novel than the diet of stale, predictable police dramas that viewers are usually subjected to.

The series has had its centre the Serious Crimes Unit of the Baltimore Police Department and the battle of wits that they engage in on a daily basis with the cities drug gangs, but that's not all that's going on here.

Each season has taken an institution or area and used as a base to expand on as Simon gets to show a city that is rotten to the core and how each part has contributed to that. This season focuses on the media and the Baltimore Sun-Times newspaper (where Simon worked as a crime reporter).

The strength of the show is its sheer depth. For fellow Wire addicts (yes, we are out there) it's a chance to see how idealistic, flawed Mayor Tommy Carcetti (Queer as Folk's Aidan Gillen), alcoholic, splendidly insubordinate yet, hugely talented Detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West), walking disaster zone Bubbles and a supporting cast of hundreds are coping a year later.

It appears that they aren't. Mayor Carcetti is presiding over a broke city, police morale has hit rock bottom due to budget cuts and worst of all Jimmy is reduced to trying to pay his bar tab with overtime sheets.

The addition of the media has introduced us to brilliantly misanthropic yet at heart an optimist editor Augustus Haynes and his team of hard-bitten old timers and 20 something bright young things who can't spell.

This week's episode opened with a classic Wire scene as the homicide team tricked a murder suspect barely in his teens into confessing to a killing using a photocopier as a 'lie detector'. It was a typical David Simon blend of tension, pitch black humour and deadly serious subject matter.


The Wire has generally around 3-4 main plots and multiple sub-plots happening at any one time densely packed together in a mouthwatering televisual feast.

David Simon is interested in how institutions fail ordinary people and The Wire serves up a myriad of government, the police, the media, unions, schools who all generally mean well but ultimately cannot make people's lives better and are frequently so corrupt and weak that they simply perpetuate the drug trade and criminality without offering any realistic alternative.

It's an acquired taste and isn't for everyone, on first viewing the chances are that you won't get it, but stick with it, I promise you this is the greatest television show ever written.

Unfortunately this is the last season so time is running out to become immersed in The Wire and what do us Wire junkies have after the season ends? It is impossible to return to anaemic home grown fare like The Bill or Holby Blue after gorging on intelligent, breathtaking writing like this.

Looks like box sets are the future then and besides what else are you going to be watching, Big Brother? Come on, do your brain a favour and catch The Wire.

After all this week's evangelising about The Wire there is hardly time for anything else. This week don't miss BBC1's gloriously ropey attempt to sex up archaeology, Bonekickers (Tuesday 9pm BBC1).

It is worth it just to see top drawer actors like Adrian Lester (Hustle) wrestling with the clunkiest script this side of the True Movies channel, yet still producing something strangely compelling even if it's for all the wrong reasons.

Also, don't forget to check out whose died (or pretended to die) this week in Hollyoaks (C4 every weekday evening at 6.30pm), sympathise with poor old Sean on Eastenders (BBC1) as Ronnie inexplicably makes him feel about as welcome as Iris Robinson at next year's Pride march and catch the concluding (you probably should have watched Wednesday night's opener) part of BBC2's showpiece eco-drama Burn Up (Friday night 9pm) as Rupert Penry-Jones' (Spooks) oil executive with a conscience journey's to the green side accompanied by the often unfairly overlooked Marc Warren (State of Play, Hustle).

Movie choice in a pretty lean cinematic week is the delightfully evil American Psycho (Film Four) on Sky channel 315 (Friday 10.45pm). Batman Christian Bale puts in a startlingly amoral yet darkly hilarious performance as narcissistic, materialistic cold hearted Wall Street broker Patrick Bateman in an adaption of Bret Easton Ellis's even more shockingly extreme novel of the same name.

When the sun goes down Bateman's clean cut smarmy broker descends into murder as he stalks Manhattan looking for ever more 'deserving' victims.
Join us next time for more reviews, previews and utterly unconstructive criticism.