March 18, 2009

The Wire coming to BBC2

All five season's of HBO's finest will soon be shown on BBC2 for wider appreciation after the critical acclaim has reached fever pitch. Unfortunately it won't be on BBC HD - it was shot in Digibeta rather than on film and it's a 4:3 presentation rather than widescreen despite being only a few years' old.
But that shouldn't stop anyone from dipping in to the finest US TV drama ever. Bar none.
And for those who wonder what all the fuss is about, this classic clip (contains quite a few bad words - do not play aloud in the office!) is a brief demonstration of its appeal. CSI was never like this...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually The Wire was shot on film and the decision to keep it 4:3 was a creative one "4x3 feels more like real life and real television and not like a movie."

For more details read this article http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/inside-hbos-the-wire

Nialli said...

That's a great link - thanks.
According to Danielle Nagler at the BBC The Wire is shot on Digibeta rather than film (she say it in her latest blog posting). I've watched all five seasons on DVD and it's one of those shows where the PQ is secondary to the drama. Interesting that they've framed it for 16:9, which suggests they may release a widescreen version in future as an upscaled Blu-Ray release.

Afront said...

Sounds like it's time to watch The Wire again - hopefully the Beeb won't melonfarm it too much.

Anonymous said...

The Wire is shot entirely with Panavision cameras. David Insley (Director of Photography) let us know that, "These later episodes of the show are shot Super 35, 3-perf, and that saves a lot of money because that means we're shooting about three quarters of the film we used to. But we're only using the 4 x 3 part, so we're losing the edges of the 16x 9, but it's less than we were using when it was 4-perf, so (the image is) somewhere between a Super 16 image and a standard 35 (mm) image."

Proves Danielle Nagler is wrong also shows that the later series can never be 16:9

Anonymous said...

Just for those who have not seen this series. In HD or not, this is simply the best piece of TV ever made.
Treat each series like a novel as each episode does not really have a beginning middle or end.
Series 5 was not as good as other.