Tapping the Wire

[first lines]

Charlie Brooker:
If you're anything like me, you're probably sick to the back arse of people telling you about some fantastic American TV series they've gotten into. Banging on and on about how Curb Your Feet Under Sopranos or whatever is "such a searing work of bloody genius, yeah?" that if you don't watch it, you might as well hurl yourself under the nearest bus for crimes against cultural sanity. Trouble is, who has time to watch all these "searing works of bloody genius"? There's just too many of them. You'd die of old age first with your brittle, wizened, disgusting old person's fingers desperately trying to open that 250 episode box set. Fortunately, there is a simple solution: only watch one of them. The best one, which is without a shadow of a doubt, The Wire.