viz.

I just finished reading an article in The New Yorker about HBO's The Wire, a gritty drama set in the city of Baltimore. Each season the show focuses on a different aspect of the city, beginning with drug dealers on the streets and gradually moving outwards to include the labor unions at the docks, the politicans, and in its fifth and final season, the news and those who cover it. More often than not, the shows paints an image of the city that is grim and hopeless.