Most critics treat The Wire as something other than a police procedural: a portrait of a whole city, built with unusual patience. Six of the seven reviews are strongly positive, and the praise clusters on the same things: the detail of the Baltimore it reconstructs, the refusal to make anyone a hero or a villain, and writing that finds its drama in paperwork and committee rooms rather than gunfire. Several reviews go so far as to rank it above anything else made for American television.
The reservations are few and scattered. The Telegraph, writing after the final episode, finds some of the last season’s plotting hard to believe, though it does not change its verdict. The one negative notice, from The Hollywood Reporter at the series’ launch, calls it detailed but relentlessly bleak and doubts viewers will want to come back each week. The spread is otherwise narrow, and the later a review is written, the warmer it tends to be.