Paperjam

Have you become obsessed with The Wire?

TV // Jim // 12th November 2008

Even though I knew it was supposed to be ace, I’ve only just got round to watching The Wire. This was partly because of a lack of anything other than terrestrial channels in my comedy house and also because now that the whole lot is out on DVD I knew that I could watch the whole lot in a fairly compressed period if it turned out to be any good.

As I now know and you already did, The Wire is easily the best TV programme I have ever seen, eclipsing even Howards Way in its depiction of gritty urban decay and sprawling character led drama. I’m not sure that watching the whole lot over the space of about six weeks was the best idea though; I started using the word “Nigga” far more than a man of my socio-economic background should (that being “at all”), added to this there was the stunt drinking, endless pogues music and referring to myself as “a council” when people asked what I did for a living.

It seems that such concentrated exposure to the dark, dense world depicted in The Wire had a profound effect on my fragile and suggestive subconscious. If you are a fellow fan you may have suffered a similar fate. Feel free to use the following questionnaire to determine the degree of your Wire fixation.

1. You pop out for a few drinks after work, how does the evening pan out?
A- Quick shandy and the back in time for tea. Work night after all!!
B- Get a bit too drunk and have to get a lift back, the other half is none to impressed, your dinner is in the dog.
C- Start on a few beers in a nearby bar, quickly graduate to whisky while trying to pull various women. Phone home with some dubious excuse about “surveillance” that your spouse doesn’t understand at all as you work for a firm of actuaries. Vomit copiously outside the bar pausing only to throw down a few more shots. Several hours later get in your car to drive home, crash it repeatedly and somehow end up shagging some jail-bait waitress on the bonnet before straightening your tie and going straight to the office for the start of business.

2. You need to get you layabout teenage son a part-time job, how do you approach the problem?
A- Leave the local newspaper open on the jobs page in his vague vicinity.
B- Have a word with your mate who runs the local pub to get him a couple of shifts glass collecting at the weekends.
C- Drag him down to where the local hoodies are hanging around outside the nearest cost-cutter, yell some thing about “Gettin’ my boy a package” and, despite their confusion, threaten them with all sorts of gangster related nastiness if there are any difficulties regarding the ”muthafuckin re-up”.

3. Its your turn to cook, but you don’t really fancy it, how do you get out of the obligation?
A- Treat the family to a slap up meal at the local Steak house.
B- Grab a couple of Big Macs and a few happy meals on the way home.
C- Get in early sit in an eerily still manner at the dinner table, when your wife gets in and asks what’s for tea, stand slowly and snarl at her “Chain. Of. Command. DETECTIVE”, as she turns to leave the room you continue “Are you happy now? Well are you, bitch?” When your kids come in to find out why mummy is crying you instruct them to “Get the warrant to the judge right now”, adding “We’ve got the motherfuckers stone cold on the paper trail”. Your youngest quietly says that he is hungry, you stare down at him and scream “I ain’t eating your ten murders – no fucking way you piece of shit”.

4. The Robinson’s Azalea has grown across the boundary of your respective front gardens, what action do you take?
A- Drop round with a very nice bottle of wine and ask if they wouldn’t mind giving it a bit of a trim.
B- Ask them to sort it and if nothing happens cut it back yourself when they are out.
C- Buy some plastic sheeting, a big bag of lime and a nailgun. Then ask the whole Robinson family if they would like to join you on a trip down to the empty council houses on the local estate, so that you can write a letter to the council about getting them sorted.

5. You are pulled over by the police as they have noticed that you have a faulty brake light, how do you engage with the officers?
A- Apologise profusely and promise to head straight to a garage.
B- Look annoyed and say “Yeah, right why don’t you go and catch some real criminals for a change”.
C- Refuse to speak to the police without first consulting a £1000 per hour lawyer formulate a deal that gets the brakelight incident expunged from your record in return for you coughing to every unsolved crime in the local area for the last five years. As you are taken away by men with guns you inform your family that you can ”do the twenty, no sweat” and that above all you “ain’t no fuckin’ snitch”.

6. At a local parish council meeting someone points out that the float from your tombola stand at the village fete is 23p light, how do you rectify things?
A- Immediately offer your resignation from the church-roof fundraising committee and write out a cheque for £20 to make up for the shortfall and the embarrassment caused.
B- State your amazement as to how anyone could really care and count out 23p slowly and sarcastically.
C- Launch into a ranting defence of your perceived light-fingered ways that to the astonishment of the vicar and collected members of the WI makes repeated reference to the damage that they seem to be trying to do to your “black ass”, after a further few minutes that involves the word “fuck” no less than eighteen times you conclude with an almost endless “Sheeeeeeeeeeeeee-it” and sit back down looking deeply indignant.

Results:
Mostly A’s: You are definitely keeping the devil down in the hole.
Mostly B’s: You are more Bill than Wire, try harder.
Mostly C’s: A life, Jimmy, you know what that is? It's the shit that happens while you're waiting for moments that never come.