Release OrderRecommended
0 / 5 watchedAir order. The story is fully serial, so start at season 1 and keep going.
- 1 The Wire Season 1 The Barksdale detail and the drug trade. 13 episodes.
- 2 The Wire Season 2 The docks, the Sobotka family and the stevedores union. 12 episodes.
- 3 The Wire Season 3 City Hall, the mayoral race and the Hamsterdam experiment. 12 episodes.
- 4 The Wire Season 4 The school system and four eighth-graders; Marlo Stanfield rises. 13 episodes.
- 5 The Wire Season 5 The Baltimore Sun newsroom. 10 episodes. Ended March 9, 2008. Latest released entry.
About The Wire
David Simon's HBO drama ran 60 episodes over five seasons, from June 2002 to March 2008. It was shot in Baltimore and built each season around one city institution. The drug trade comes first, then the docks, City Hall, the schools and finally the press.
Watch the seasons in order. Characters and cases carry straight through, and later seasons pay off threads from earlier ones. The show won no major Emmys in its original run and found its reputation afterward.
Good to know
Episode counts per season: 13, 12, 12, 13 and 10. Three prequel shorts exist online but add nothing required to the story, so they sit outside this list.
