Brace yourself for Wire Weekender

The Wire is either the best TV drama series ever written, or something you’ve never seen. And, considering the lavish critical acclaim, it’s hard to credit how many people haven’t experienced a single ­episode of David Simon’s pains­taking dissection of Baltimore, a city in decline.

He based the series on the book he wrote, Homicide: A Year on the ­Killing Streets, about time spent as a young journalist shadowing ­Baltimore’s homicide squad. Many of the crazed and colourful characters in The Wire are versions of crims and cops he met then.

In five consistently brilliant, fast-talking and often witty series, he and a team of top writers (including George Pelecanos) use a band of misfit detectives to lead viewers on a journey through the troubled city, from the kids selling drugs on street corners, through the education system, dying docks, mayoral race and local paper.

Devotees have mostly followed the HBO series on DVD, box set by box set, since it didn’t make it to mainstream television. Celebrating the imminent DVD release of the fifth and final season, and the belated publication in the UK of the original book, Curzon Soho in Shaftesbury Avenue hosts a two-day screening of all 10 episodes of the last ever series, tomorrow and Sunday.

Besides the obvious pleasures of finding out what happens to Omar, McNulty, Bunk, Marlow, Lester and the rest, the event also includes a discussion, tomorrow night, with David Simon. Recommended only for those who have seen the first four seasons.

Otherwise, sit down with the first series and a DVD player. You, too, will come to care about high-achieving no-hopers like Snoop, a 14-year-old girl who knows where the bodies are buried because she did the digging. But the ones you’ll really fall for are Omar, the toughest gay guy ever to wear a (glorious) silk dressing gown, and the detective, Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West, doing drunk and American to perfection), a determined detective who can solve a case but not the mysteries of his own life.

Returns, in person, only for The Wire Weekender; £60 (£50 for Curzon members), which includes copy of David Simon’s book, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets (Canongate). The Complete Season 5 is released on Monday by HBO Video, £34.99.

Curzon Soho
93-107 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, W1D 5DY