MovieChat Forums > Cracker (1993) Discussion > The Wire Vs. Cracker...

The Wire Vs. Cracker...

posted 16 years ago by Bruce_Willys
11 replies | jump to latest

Okay the Wire seems like the hip thing of the last few years, I have the first season on Dvd, seems a bit dull, too American (slang/culture)for us Brits to be honest....However Cracker grabbed me from the very first episode. Dunno how many times I have watched this show over the years (currently on ITV3), its just so great. People say how the Wire is supposed to be real clever, but Cracker is watchable either as one off episodes, "story" episodes (ie the 2/3 episodes per "baddie") or as a character study over the course of it whole run, all the main characters go through big changes and it covers so many Big questions, as well as being exciting, well acted etc............ Personally I think Cracker is by far the greatest tv drama ever, with the Sopranos in second, and the Wire nowhere near.

[–] YouMad 16 years ago

Fail

The Wire >> The Sopranos >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 1000 other shows >>>> Cracker

[–] DrZaat 16 years ago

Don't you just love the scintillating intellect behind a response like "Fail?" What can one say in response to such brilliance?

As for your question, I guess it depends on what you're looking for. The Wire deals with crime as a socio-economic phenomenon and gives more weight to the ensemble of actors in the show. Cracker explores the psychical motivations of crime and, altho a number of characters are developed, clearly it is Robbie Coltrane's show. I'm from the US, so I have no problem with American slang, nor are the Britishisms in Cracker hard to decipher, so neither show has an edge in this regard. Personally, I like them equally and wish more tv rose to their level.

[–] Fad64 15 years ago

I loved Cracker when it first aired. I think it was in a league it shared with only Prime Suspect at the time. Then years went by and The Wire came out...and trumped Cracker, purely because of production values and the fact that the complexity of drama writing has improved thanks to the likes of The Sopranos.
Cracker is very, very good...it's just that The Wire is better...and I'm English...just like the main actors in The Wire :)

[–] FoxyKnoxyHart 15 years ago

Cracker is my second favorite TV of all time, right after The Wire. I'm American, so that probably says a lot about me. BBC America actually reran 6 episodes of Cracker today and I watched each one of them. On rewatch you can totally tell they were made in the 90s, but still enjoy them as much as the first time I saw them.

http://youtube.com/WireLover2
http://twitter.com/RoxieVelma

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] ganryu-3 15 years ago

I notice everyone who tries to play the Wire off as overrated and compare it to some cop drama (The Shield or whatever for example), they always mention how they didn't even finish the first season. Obviously, because The Wire is so much more than some cop drama, it's about the failures of our systems and institutions that we set up to serve us. Law enforcement, politics, schools, even the drug trade. They're all so far gone and are no a longer about getting done what they were originally meant to be doing, and whatever institution a person chooses to serve in their life, it'll either toss them aside or they compromise and become a part of the problem. The Wire is not user friendly, there's enough of that on tv already. There's no pat law and order ending where the bad guy gets locked away every episode so we can feel good pretending that's how it works in the real world. The Wire examines real life issues that most people want to go on ignoring. It's complex, novel-like and doesn't offer any easy answers. Whether you like it or not, nothing else even compares.

[–] alfa-16 15 years ago

The Wire is the best TV series ever made.

Cracker has incredible depth for a TV series, breaks all kinds of moulds and conventions. It is brilliantly written by a gifted playwright who, in the mid 90's, was at the top of his form.

Not only does Cracker have the best police psychiatrist and the best analysis of motive and character since Dostoyevsky, it has the best cop sidekick in detective history, from Watson to Bunk, in the toweringly wonderful portrayal of DS Penhaligon by Geraldine Somerville, who is plagued by the jealousy of another incredible standout in Jimmy Beck and if even that were not enough, it has Robert Carlisle as Albie, surely the greatest villain of modern times.

But The Wire is something else. It's ambition is truly staggering. It lays the city of Baltimore on an operating table and, over the course of 5 years, dissects it without any kind of overall direction or animus, turning the whole of humanity inside out so we can see everything. It is the coolest yet most angry, the hottest yet most dispassionate essay on modern times that we have.

To find anything remotely like it, you have to go to an earlier Liverpool playwright writing for television. Alan Bleasdale's The Boys from the Blackstuff has the same quality of vision, the same searching examination of a city in turmoil, but nothing like The Wire's breadth of ambition.

Cracker is Crime and Punishment.

The Wire is War and Peace.

[–] 15 years ago

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[–] alfa-16 15 years ago

That was Liverpool between Please Please Me and Hillsborough. Everyone was a warrior, a poet or a philosopher. I lived it. Also on the ground floor.

The final, incredible last scene was filmed in a real pub (still there) with its own regulars. There are still a couple like it, clinging on by their fingernails.

[–] dazydood 15 years ago

Both series were suberb. While The Wire focused on the emotional expression of a US geographic region - and did so brilliantly - Cracker used its crime strewn region to elicit myriad colours of a single drunken crime enforcer. And I cannot forget that man. The writing combined with Robbie Coltrane's performance resulted in the best crime drama to grace television as far as I'm concerned. And that is not a slight to The Wire. It is a nod to the transcendence behind those that made Cracker. It simply stands above its competition.

[–] boogles 15 years ago

I think Cracker was the best British TV drama of the 1990s. It was one of TV all time great series. Coltrane is great, but also the rest of the cast Barbara Flynn, Ecclestone, Thomlison, etc. Plus great writing from McGovern, also Paul Abbot wrote a few, and great directing from Michael Winterbottom.

I love also that it was shot on film - also Super 16 so that it was more suited to widescreen, and also in Dolby Surround.

Sadly it was one of the last great things ITV(Granada)made before turning itself in dumbovision.

The Wire I enjoyed(I must admit I didn't think much of the first season). I thought it was a bit overhyped though.

The Sopranos is excellent. I think Cracker can stand next to The Sopranos as a great crime drama. Plus it was ahead of its time in using forensic and profiling in a crime drama(although I think that did happen in Prime Suspect).