You can scarcely read the British press these days without some bandwagon-jumping journalist enthusing about how gosh-darn wonderful TV series The Wire is. It’s addictive, they say. Like Pringles. It’s high art, in hour long bursts. The best thing on TV since, well, ever.

I might be paraphrasing a tad, but according to The Times, The Guardian and every other top tier publication in Britain, The Wire is Shakespeare on the small screen.

In America and abroad, the crime show, set in Baltimore’s bleak criminal underworld, has achieved cult status and brought new prestige to the already edgy HBO network. Basic message; if you consider yourself intellectually, culturally savvy and on trend, you should be tuning in.

Except, who actually is? A poll of friends reveals few fans, although one admits checking it out “because I thought I should”. In wider circles, it’s certainly not discussed in the way other series are, such as 24 or Desperate Housewives.

Viewing figures are not exactly skyrocketing either. When FX aired the final season in 2008, not even 70 000 people chose to watch. Of course, that overlooks the numbers watching on DVD, or downloading it illegally from the web, but to put it in perspective, 10.3 million are tuning in weekly for Britain’s Got Talent. Still, these days, it seems everybody is talking, tweeting or facebooking about The Wire. So, ever the intrepid field reporter, I decided to put my DVD player where my mouth is.

Immediately, it became clear that escapism, this isn’t. A dead body opens the pilot episode, and it gets progressively grimmer, a downwards spiral of drug dealers, abuse of power and misery.

In one scene, a character watches a news report on a faraway war, but it is this war, the war at home, that the writers want us to care about. If police dramas normally showcase the honour and glory of the fight, The Wire tells a much darker story.

Everyone is disenfranchised, alienated from the lives they should have but never will. There is no hope, not for the witness in the wrong place at the wrong time, the junkie looking for his next fix, or even the brooding Detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) fighting to find cause in a moral vacuum.

As one character remarks meaningfully, “the game is rigged. You cannot lose if you don’t play”.
A depressing world view, but not the main reason why, two episodes later, I’m switching The Wire off. I can see why it has attracted such critical praise, from the loaded epigraphs that open each episode to the gritty realism it perpetrates. Exactly what you’d watch if you wanted to feel culturally superior.

The show isn’t all bad; intelligently written, with richly layered plotlines and characters who are anything but stereotypical. At times, there are even smatterings of humour; a contemplation over the logistics of shit rolling down a hill was a highlight.

Not enough though, to send me back to episode three. Apart from anything else, there are far too many characters to follow (as one twitterer snidely observes; “what does twitter have in common with an episode of The Wire? The[y] both have up to 140 characters”). The show might be aimed at an intellectual audience, but come on, a little identification wouldn’t go amiss.

More than that, it’s a bit preachy. TV doesn’t, and shouldn’t, have to be dumbed down. I’m all for shows that educate as well as entertain, but at times The Wire felt more like a college course in criminal psychology. Albeit with more gun shots.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that the characters are not likeable. In trying to highlight the absence of heroism in a dirtied system, we are given nobody to root for and invest in emotionally, and ultimately, little reason to keep watching. Jack Bauer might cross the line occasionally, but you always know whose side he’s on. In this, its hard to tell.

Creator David Simon, a former journalist, clearly knows his stuff. As a social commentary, its doubtful you would find another show more insightful and willing to confront dark questions. Yet to me, watching was like buying shoes simply for the posh label, only to secretly swap them for the non-designer pair. You know they probably won’t be as good for your feet, they might even be a little tacky, and they certainly won’t make your friends jealous. Still, they’re just that bit more fun. The Wire might make you the coolest kid at the water cooler, but an hour in front of Desperate Housewives? Way more enjoyable.