I’ve never been and never will be a big Wire fan, and I’m frankly 50/50 about catching HBO and David Simon‘s remastered high-def version of the 60 episodes, which begins on 12.26. I’ve been beaten up pretty badly by HE commenters over the years about having missed all but a fraction of The Wire when it originally ran so I’m figuring why break the streak? Then again it’ll be something to do during the Christmas-to-New Year’s slumber so maybe. The reason it didn’t pop last September is because Simon wanted to work on re-mastering the high-def widescreen version. He’s written that portions work and some don’t. The series was obviously shot to be seen in 4:3, and that’s how it should be seen today. And yet looking at the two versions below, I can’t say I have a huge problem with the 16:9 version. The cropping and widening seem more or less tolerable.
