The "snot boogie" pre-title scene in episode one. It was partly the anecdote and partly Dominic West's slightly odd screen presence that hooked me and I knew almost instantly that, at the very least I was going to watch to the end of the episode.

(Wire trivia fans may wish to know that the show's production designer Vince Peranio had a cat named Boogie Snot which he says is where David Simon got the idea from).

...with The Wire.

It's just a lot of really rich impressions that it leaves you with. The thing I can't get out of my head - and I've just watched it again on You Tube - is the scene at the beginning of Series Four when Snoop, who we haven't met before, goes to buy a nail gun at the Hardware Barn.

The density of that scene is astounding. The amount you learn about nail guns for a start. The very helpful chap doing the selling refers to the preferred tool as "the Cadillac of nail guns". "He mean Lexus, but he ain't know it," says Snoop getting back into the van.

How's about for the elegant avoidance of a spoiler?

Towards the end of Season 1 Rawls tells McNutty that he's not to blame for...(Spoiler removed)...and that this should mean more to him coming from someone who thinks he's a "gaping asshole".

about 2 minutes in.

When the CCTV camera was decomissioned in the title sequence I guessed this could be really good, you know the rest.

P.S. to Mr. H - Although we hadn't been formally intoduced to her, If you looked carefully Snoop could be observed in several scenes in Series 3. She was fairly unintelligible to non-Baltimoran ears though.

Don't want 'em, throw 'em back'

What a brilliant quote from David Simon in his Culture Show interview. You've got to love that man!

It took me a few episodes to really get into the show. The clinching moment for me was probably the episode where Lester, up till now an almost silent character just whittling away and seemingly another of the useless ones assigned to the team, goes off and gets the picture of Avon. Everyone, especially McNulty, looks at him in a completely new light and I thought here's a show for me.

That and Bubs.

Be very careful browsing for clips on YouTube or even using Google to search for press and blog coverage of The Wire. Almost every key moment and out-of-the-blue shock has been uploaded and commented on, usually under explicit "Tom & Dick kill Harry stone dead lololol"-type headlines, making it impossible to avoid spoilers.

The scene that stuck out for me and made me realise this was something different was McNulty & Bunk's visit to a crime scene where they keep repeating the word fuck over & over again...priceless

In a year of Word-fuelled Wire watching, I have now decided - but only now - that it is indeed superior to every other television show in existence. The first series? I loved it. But it was a good seven episodes before I decided that was among the best television I'd seen. Fast forward to the end of the second series. Yes, I thought. This is a masterpiece. Having finished the fourth series the night before last - a more gripping, socially realistic and disturbing thirteen episodes will not be found anywhere - I have finally decided that yes, it is the greatest television series ever conceived.

Because, the thing is, it is more than television. It is more than Baltimore; it is more than the USA. It is our entire culture. It's the only thing on television that dares to confront the frightening notions of the times we live in in such uncomfortable detail; and the fourth series documents this better than any other series. What kind of generation are we raising? Sure, every society has moaned that they have lost their values, but I'm convinced that we're living in a painfully unique era. I was ranting about this sort of stuff with some friends last night, and it got to the point where I had to ask, "Do you watch The Wire?" If we could have found that common ground, there would have been a good hour of the conversation that would have been unnecessary.