"THE WIRE" - HBO DRAMA SERIES

Two stories in Wednesday's paper couldn't have benefited HBO's sterling new
cop show, "The Wire," any better.

One said the FBI was shifting its priorities toward the war on terrorism,
and the result would be a reduction in the war on drugs.

A second noted that the government's National Drug Control Strategy was
failing -- messages aimed at youth were going unheeded. Cut to the
dangerous drug- and murder-filled streets of Baltimore, the setting for
HBO's latest entry into the crime-and-punishment genre, where the drug war
is still a very big deal. There is a scene -- written and filmed long
before the FBI's announced redirection -- where a crack dealer's apartment
is wired with fiber-optic cameras and hidden microphones. The warrants are
in place.

The infiltration leads all the way back to New York. When the bust comes,
it's going to be huge. But it's also going to be the last one. The
government agent notes, with some regret, that in a post-9/11 world, drug
crimes are no longer a priority. To Detective James McNulty (Dominic West)
of the Baltimore homicide unit, drugs and murder are a way of life, a daily
battle.

Not long before that scene, he has set in motion the brilliantly nuanced
machinations of several intersecting law enforcement agencies, which form
the backbone of "The Wire," just the latest offering from HBO that makes
you shake your head at the level of quality the channel continues --
seemingly effortlessly -- to churn out.

It should surprise no one that just when the broadcast networks have
decided the country wants one-episode, closed-ended story lines, HBO goes
in the opposite direction with stunningly great execution. "The Wire" is a
13-episode drama series that delves into the morass of the drug world from
every angle.

This is no simplistic good-guy, bad-guy story so common in this genre.

Instead, writers David Simon and Edward Burns (HBO's "The Corner," based on
the book they wrote together) flesh out all sides -- those in narcotics and
homicide in the Baltimore Police Department, the dealers running the
Westside projects as efficiently as the Mafia, the judges, prosecutors and
defense lawyers, the culture surrounding each and, most important, the
choking bureaucracy that plagues each. Yes, even the dealers.

Reporter's Sense Of Detail

From that you should glean that "The Wire" is going to be complicated and
involved, like a good book -- which it is. Simon, who also wrote the book
that "Homicide: Life on the Street" was based on, was a crime reporter for
the Baltimore Sun for 13 years.

He has a keen sense of detail and an awareness that not everything is black
and white on either side of the crime-and-punishment story. "The story is
rooted in the verisimilitude of police work, but it's not really a cop show
in the traditional sense," Simon said. "We're taking a look at institutions
- -- and the drug war has become just that -- and what those institutions do
to the people who serve them." Here's the critical translation to that: The
man has written a damn good series that goes beyond a mere cop show.

"The Wire" centers on Detective McNulty, who used to work the Westside
projects. In the pilot, he sits in on a murder trial the D.A. thinks is a
lock -- but one a powerful drug lord manages to flip. The third one,
actually. McNulty tells the judge later that there are at least 10 unsolved
murders that may be linked to an emerging crime ring and points out that
the judge just got played in his own courtroom.

Once the judge -- with political heft -- burns up the phone lines,
narcotics, homicide, the D.A. and others have been scolded into action.

But as everyone covers their backside, McNulty knows that the drug crew,
headed by Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris) is far smarter and better organized
than the cops give them credit for, and that the only way to root them out
is to get in deep -- something there's no money or passion for. DRUG WAR'S
DAILY GRIND What Simon and "The Wire" are getting at here is failure and
stagnation, routine and a way of life for several entities that amount to
nothing more than the daily grind in the drug war. There's much that
resonates here more powerfully than in your tidy beat-down and lock-'em-up
broadcast story line. There are hints of "EZ Streets" here for fans who can
remember that bleak and doomed CBS offering years ago. But the complexity
in "The Wire" goes even deeper.

Maybe cable, with FX's "The Shield," is starting to steal the thunder from
aging network standard bearers "NYPD Blue" and all those "Law & Order"
spin-offs. But leave it to HBO, late to the genre, to come in and add more
heft, make the moral waters more murky, all with superb acting and smart,
real dialogue.

The network has added another gem to its lineup of original programming,
and its success rate is staggering. So you know where to plant yourself on
Sunday and whom to thank for saving the summer.

Just don't expect an easy resolution in this latest reworking of cops and
crooks.