The Wire

The Wire starts with a Baltimore drug investigation and gradually broadens into a portrait of the city. Police, dealers, workers, officials and young people operate under different rules, but the consequences of their decisions rarely stay neatly within one world.

David Simon's five-season drama is among television's best. Its patience is a strength: an apparently minor conversation can become important once you understand the pressures behind it. The characters are never just examples in an argument about an institution.

Dominic West plays detective Jimmy McNulty, with Wendell Pierce as Bunk Moreland and Sonja Sohn as Kima Greggs. Idris Elba and Michael K. Williams give Stringer Bell and Omar Little very different kinds of presence.

Give the opening episodes your attention and let the relationships become familiar. The reward is a story whose people and places remain vivid long after the immediate investigation changes. The Sopranos, The Shield and We Own This City offer rewarding comparisons without reproducing the same experience.