Hi everyone, Bryan Here…
One of the best television shows to ever air is finally getting the Blu-ray treatment. I’m of course talking about HBO’s ‘The Wire‘. Last year, HBO GO announced that ‘The Wire‘ would be remastered in HD, and at the start of 2015, HBO GO put up the new, fresh transfer up for viewing for HBO subscribers. I can safely say that this is the best the series has ever looked. There is a new aspect ratio and everything looks crystal clear and cleaned up.
Now that the Blu-ray has been announced, it will be even better, since you won’t have to deal with streaming issues like you do with HBO GO. The complete series on Blu-ray will be out in stores on June 2, 2015 and will have a ton of cool extras. The HBO press release says it will be the perfect gift for Father’s Day, but hell, this is a perfect gift for anyone who likes good tv.
All 60 episodes of the iconic series have been re-mastered in 16×9 Full Frame HD and will have four behind-the-scenes documentaries, three prequels that explore life before ‘The Wire‘, and an all-new cast and crew Q&A from the recent reunion. I’m also hoping there will be commentaries, deleted scenes and hopefully an interview with Tom Waits for his song ‘Way Down in the Hole‘, which was the theme song to the show. The suggested price right now is $199.99, but i’m sure you’ll find it on Amazon or other retail stores much cheaper than that.
‘The Wire‘ depicts an American urban dystopia, framed in our time, in which easy distinctions between good and evil and crime and punishment are challenged at every turn. In five successive seasons, the series depicts a Baltimore in which institutional prerogatives, economic inequalities and a brutalizing drug war confound the efforts to advance the city and its people. The series’ first season lays out the futility of the drug war, while the second highlights the deindustrialization and the death of the working class. The third season introduces the city’s political culture and lays out the forces that stand in the path of actual reform. The fourth season addresses the educational system and the actual opportunities that remain to coming generations. The fifth and final season examines the media culture and its role in perpetuating the status quo. Amid all of this, carefully drawn characters on both sides of the law and from a variety of Baltimore cultures move forward as best they can, human to a flaw, struggling against a system that seems weighted against civic progress.