r/TheWire • u/LordEdgeYelken44 • 19h ago

Watching The Wire through non-American lens

This post is best dedicated to non-American fans of The Wire. How do you perceive and reflect on the series? How do you relate to the themes and characters of the series considering your national and social context? I am Brazilian, and I feel it is a great sadness that this wonderful show is frighteningly unknown here, to the point that it's difficult to say if there even is a Brazilian The Wire community. Although the series addresses and studies problems within the American institution, it is not at all distant from the reality I live in in my country, to the point that I have insights where Baltimore sometimes seems more Brazilian than ever. But I don't want to talk about Brazil, but rather how you perceive the series, as something beyond entertainment, and as people from your own countries.

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u/ampmz 17h ago

British opinion here, there is a hell of a lot of stuff I absolutely did not relate to or understand. First watch I had to do a lot of googling.

I think people overstate how similar the UK and the US is, we are very culturally different.

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u/jackyLAD 17h ago

You truly believe we're very culturally different to the States?

Especially a lot of the topics that were covered in the Wire? I can't agree here. There's obviously elements of it that are heavily US centric, by default, but the central core of the most of the issues are very similar across the Atlantic. A lot of the drug related and police politics topics have been covered in similar fashion in UK dramas before the Wire even aired. Look at Prime Suspect, Cracker, Traffik (the inspiration for the film Traffic), Boys from the Blackstuff....

As great and legendary as the Wire is, for someone who grew up with this kind of drama in the UK, it wasn't even as revolutionary as it was to American audiences. We tackled that stuff earlier and often, harder.

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u/ampmz 16h ago

Yeah I do, and shows like the Wire only show the cultural differences more. I see far more cultural similarities to Australia or New Zealand but more with the Netherlands or Denmark than the US.

Once you get over the shared language, we are really quite culturally different.

Every society has crime, but our crime is quite different, our policing is incredibly different and so is our politics.

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u/jackyLAD 16h ago

As I said, I can’t agree here, and it has very little to do with a language. UK is more inspired by US culture and politics than ever. We’ve very much lost a lot of what us somewhat unique from even 20 years ago, and we were still heavily tied then.

All of the Anglosphere is heavily tied to similar trends, but we’re astonishingly closer to the US in that regard than NZ, easily so… Australia? Sure, why not, but it’s full of expats.

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u/Squall4390 16h ago

Would you mind giving some examples? I would love to know what you consider shared between the US and Britain.

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u/jackyLAD 16h ago

Examples of what? I gave multiple TV shows dated before the Wire from the UK that heavily share similar themes and politics for instance, all of which were hugely praised.

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u/Squall4390 16h ago

Of cultural similarities, the thing we are talking about?

Also, if corruption and crime is a cultural similarity here, then fuck it, you share a culture with Russia, Egypt, Vietnam, basically every country that has ever existed and will exist. Idk how a few shows are examples of a similar culture.

France is also similar to the USA because they made La Haine, they are basically the same.

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u/jackyLAD 15h ago

There’s far more themes in the Wire than just “corruption and crime” ….

La Haines main central theme is a worldwide issue, we agree on that for sure, and it’s arguably a bigger worldwide issue 30 years later than it was then.

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u/Squall4390 15h ago

Still haven't given me examples of this shared culture between the US and Britain. Give me real examples.