The Wire – Concrete Playground

Written by a former police reporter, this masterful series explores Baltimore’s relationship with law and order.

The Wire isn’t an anthology series in the traditional sense. It focuses on the same Baltimore police detectives each season — as led by Dominic West and Wendell Pierce — but sees their investigations overlap with a different element of the city’s daily life. In the first season, it peers into illegal drugs. In the second, sea freight and the ports are in the spotlight. Across subsequent seasons, the focus falls on city government, the education system and newspapers.

Dense, intricate, devastatingly smart and oh-so-involving, the result is one of the best shows that HBO has ever made — and a series on par with The…