Liberal Vision

Over 100 hours of glorious television proving two key points

Liberal Vision doesn’t do commerical advertising (yet), but if we did, we’d offer a huge discount to promote these two top quality products.

Arguably the best television drama productions of the last few years, The Wire and The Shield are both ultra-gritty, unalloyed cop dramas exposing the catastrophic levels of bureaurcratic corruption in a largely futile battle against violent crime.

The Wire follows – across its five seasons – the drugs war in the public  housing projects of Baltimore, the corruption of the trade unions, the catastrophes of the state eduction system, the sleaze in the mayor’s office and the changing role of a cynical media.

The 88-episode Shield focuses on renegade cop Vic Mackey, whose gang-busting Strike Team causes as many problems as it solves in the social abomination that is the Farmington district of Los Angeles.

Having now watched both series – practically back-to-back – I was left with two abiding impressions. Firstly, the war on drugs is not just a collosal waste of money, it is crushingly counter-productive, embedding a multi-billion pound industry in the hands of murderous gang warlords and effectively destroying the rule of law in a raft of deprived areas.

Secondly, commerical American television is now producing drama that surpasses the tamer and less imaginative output that is increasingly the fare of the state-financed BBC. In fact, if you refuse to pay your licence fee this year, you can just about afford to buy the full box sets of The Wire and The Shield from Amazon.