HBO has produced a ton of great shows, but any debate about the network’s best crime drama inevitably comes down to The Sopranos and The Wire. In a broader discussion of HBO’s best original programming, classic series like Band of Brothers, Six Feet Under, and Curb Your Enthusiasm are bound to come up, as well as more recent gems, like Succession and Chernobyl.
But two jewels in the HBO crown are slightly shinier than all the others. The Sopranos and The Wire are two definitive TV masterpieces to come out of HBO, like Breaking Bad and Mad Men for AMC. But while the New Jersey-set mafia drama changed television, the Baltimore-set study of America’s broken institutions offers a better crime show.
The Sopranos’ Impact On Television Will Never Be Matched
The Sopranos’ impact on television can’t be measured. It blew open the possibilities of what a TV show could be and marked a watershed moment for the entire industry. HBO had already featured grim subject matter, cinematic visuals, recognizable actors from the movies, and its signature subversive graphic violence in Oz, but The Sopranos took that revolution and ran with it.
Oz walked so that The Sopranos could run. With The Sopranos, David Chase proved that a longstanding tenet of the TV business — and the entertainment industry in general — was built on a misconception. For decades, studio executives thought that audiences wouldn’t want to follow a character who wasn’t sympathetic or likable.
But with the saga of Tony Soprano, Chase proved that TV protagonists didn’t have to be likable; they just had to be interesting. If they were interesting, audiences would gladly invest in their story and follow them for years. This led to the creation of The Shield’s Vic Mackey, The Wire’s Omar Little, Mad Men’s Don Draper, and most notably, Breaking Bad’s Walter White.
Of course, The Sopranos’ influence goes far beyond simply popularizing the TV antihero. It pioneered a whole new style of storytelling. Rather than following an episodic case-of-the-week format, The Sopranos told a serialized story over six seasons. Instead of following the standard rules of coverage, The Sopranos had an eerie, cinematic aesthetic that was completely its own.
Chase also demonstrated the ability to subvert the expectations of a well-worn movie genre in a long-form medium. The Sopranos has all the blood-soaked mob hits of a typical gangster movie, but it also shows the mob boss in his downtime, playing with ducks in his swimming pool, attending sessions with his therapist, and visiting his dysfunctional mother.
The Wire Should Always Be Brought Up In The Same Conversation As The Sopranos
Shows like Breaking Bad and Mad Men are often mentioned in the same breath as The Sopranos, but there’s one show that is truly its equal. Every time The Sopranos is brought up as one of the greatest TV shows ever produced, The Wire deserves a mention, too. The Sopranos may have established HBO as the home of prestige TV, but The Wire cemented it.
Every season of The Wire plays like its own standalone miniseries spotlighting another modern institutional problem within the United States, with old and new characters dipping in and out. Season 1 tackles the illegal drug trade, while season 2 tackles the death of the working class. Season 3 covers political corruption, season 4 takes on the public school system, and season 5 explores sensationalist media.
These outings all come together to form a well-rounded journalistic study of the American city. It’s more honest in its depiction of those problems than most corporate-owned news media outlets. But, as informative and enlightening as it is, it’s also a story at its core. It almost plays like a contemporary Greek tragedy on the streets of Baltimore.
The Sopranos & The Wire Both Accurately Depict Their World, But The Wire Is More Realistic
Part of what makes The Sopranos and The Wire stand out from other crime shows is that they accurately depict the worlds they inhabit. Breaking Bad is an incredible story, but it takes place in a pulpy fantasy world, where a fried chicken magnate runs a meth empire out of a dry cleaners and getting hold of methylamine requires a train robbery.
The Sopranos and The Wire are different; they go out of their way to reflect the real world. The Sopranos has been praised for its accuracy in portraying the day-to-day lives of mobsters, and The Wire has been praised for its accuracy in portraying all the fractured American institutions, from law enforcement, to local government, to public schools.
The Sopranos is more than just a gangster show; its accuracy goes beyond its portrayal of mafia business and extends to Italian-American family life. It’s as much a family drama as it is a mafia drama. With overbearing mothers, big, heartburn-inducing dinners, and a lot of yelling, The Sopranos captures life in an Italian-American family as accurately as life in the mob.
However, while The Sopranos and The Wire are both an accurate reflection of the criminal underworlds they depict, The Wire is much more realistic than The Sopranos. The Sopranos has a lot of dream sequences, a lot of surreal humor, and a lot of wacky storylines that make it feel slightly out there. The Sopranos also greatly exaggerates how many people are killed by the mob.
The Wire creator David Simon worked as a crime reporter in Baltimore for years, so he had an advantage over every other writer working on a cop show. Simon had a wealth of first-hand experience watching police officers at work, getting to know them on the job and seeing how it was done — and he turned those experiences into the most realistic police procedural ever made.
In a show like CSI or Law & Order, the team takes on a new case at the beginning of an episode and wraps it up in a neat bow by the end of that same episode. That’s not how it goes in real life. In reality, cases go unsolved and criminals go free all the time.
In The Wire, it sometimes takes multiple seasons to build a case against a drug lord, and it often turns out to be futile. Even when the Major Crimes Unit manages to get a crime boss like Avon Barksdale behind bars, the gap in the market is filled immediately and the cycle continues.
A couple of The Wire’s storylines are a bit of a stretch. The whole “Hamsterdam” thing, designating a section of the city as a Purge-like criminal paradise, is a terrible idea that probably wouldn’t get approved by a real police commissioner. Plus, The Wire’s final season is controversial for its contrived fake serial killer narrative.
But those are a couple of minor gripes. For the most part, The Wire has an almost documentary-like sense of realism. With its naturalistic dialogue, mundane police procedures, steadfastly linear storytelling, and gritty, straightforward visual style, it makes you feel like a fly on the wall observing real criminal activities and the investigations of them.
The Sopranos Is All About Tony, But The Main Character In The Wire Is The City Of Baltimore
The Sopranos and The Wire have a very different dramatic focus. The Sopranos is a character study that revolves entirely around Tony. It digs into his fragile psychology, his complicated relationships, and what makes him tick. If you get invested in Tony (and James Gandolfini’s amazing performance makes it impossible not to), then you’ll be with The Sopranos all the way.
The Wire, on the other hand, doesn’t have a main character. If it does have a main character, it’s the city of Baltimore. The show has a revolving door of characters that come in and out of focus, depending on which aspect of the city a given storyline is focusing on. The Wire has many great characters; just don’t get too attached to them.
The Wire Is Ultimately A Stronger Show Than The Sopranos
When it comes to actually naming the superior show between The Sopranos and The Wire, it’s a tough call. The Sopranos undeniably had more cultural impact than The Wire. The Sopranos wasn’t just well-received by critics and awards voters; it was a bona fide blockbuster success with audiences, too. The Wire didn’t have the same luck, unfortunately.
Astoundingly, while The Sopranos won 21 Emmy Awards, The Wire never won a single Emmy in any of its five seasons. It was nominated for two writing awards, but lost to House and Mad Men, respectively. None of the dozens of incredible actors in its sprawling ensemble cast ever received an Emmy nomination, nor did any of its directors, editors, or the show itself.
While The Wire was universally acclaimed by critics and is still labeled one of the greatest TV shows ever made to this day, it struggled to find an audience. The series was always on the brink of cancellation; if it had been a bigger hit in the ratings, we would’ve gotten The Wire season 6 about immigration or the healthcare system.
If I was forced to name a better show between The Sopranos and The Wire, I’d have to say The Wire. As much as I love The Sopranos, there are a couple of things that drag it down. Some Sopranos episodes are masterpieces, but there’s also the heavy-handed Columbus Day episode and the coma dream installments.