... she fancies McNulty - even when I pointed out he had little legs.

I too got into it late - so missed out on the little community thing the mag had going on back in the day. I too found my FRO wasn't the slightest bit interested - and ditto for The Sopranos. She adores The West Wing however.

Maybe it's a bit of a vicarious fantasy role play thing.

You could read Sudhir Venkatesh's blog entries about "What do real thugs think of The Wire". He a Columbia sociologist who wrote the book "Gang Leader for a Day".

Blog entries here:
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/the-wire/

I too adore The Wire & The Sopranos. They are essentially about gangs. The cops are a gang, the Feds, the criminals, the wives and girlfriends are a gang... Men have an innate gang mentality - they enjoy banter & exchanging insults (to replace / avoid saying what they really feel). I got into The Wire when I was doing a job without a 'home' - I think McNulty, Bunk and the rest became my surrogate buddies. Sad, but true.

Got me into it, in fact. (I still recall the first time I watched it - "I don't understand what's going on, who's that man, what's he doing..." "Ssshh. Just go with it.").

My enjoyment is in no way tempered by the fact that her immediate ex actually directed a couple of episodes, including the one in which they lay the cop out on the pool table for his wake, and lustily sing along to Body of an American. He suggested the song, I believe. Big Pogues fan.

absolutely adored it and it gave us loads of talk about afterwards - it was one of the very few things we can watch together, and we used to really look forward to sitting down together and watching a couple of episodes

..and women buy a LOT of crime novels, and not just Agatha Christie and Ruth Rendell but contemporary names such as Michael Connolly and George Pelicanos too. My wife couldn't be bothered with the Wire but I know a lot of women who love it.

On a Saturday night for the Wire. Divisive viewing is:

Battlestar Galactica - me, it's not really about spaceships, it's about the war on terror...her - it's about spaceships

War movies - Platoon, Dirty Dozen, Thin Red Line, etc etc.

In fact most films - as that's too big a commitment to make when she could watch 3 episodes of Relocation, Relocation...and decide to stop watching anytime....me: but why would you start...

loves The Wire,Mad Men and The Sopranos but adores Deadwood the most,seems to find Al Swearengen attractive.Not at all sure what that says about me.

so can't say I ever thought of it as a particularly male thing.

English is not her first language so we watched them all with subtitles, which turned out handy for me too!

Funnily enough, I was going to say that I know other girls that liked The Wire too but now I come to think of it, none of them have English as their first language either...now there's a theory!

is a bit out of touch. Mind you, her favourite programme is Poirot which says an awful lot.

since my wife hasn't watched it at all yet, but I'm about 3 series in. As a british male, I'll confirm part of your theory as I do think it is great, but I'd say Homicide Life On The Street is as good (Baltimore police procedural, some shared actors/production/writers). Yes they wrapped up each episode in the hour long format, but there were story arcs across a series and multiple series, and usually a killer soundtrack item each week. Maybe a bit more stylized than realistic, but them's the breaks.

you'd be amazed by the amount of women who are attracted to tony soprano