The Wire: The view from the outside

Monkey has been dispatched to Heathrow, rather grumpily, what with it being at 4am. Television never sleeps! Anyway, he's off for two weeks, sticking cameras in the faces of hardened criminals across Central America and the Caribbean or something. I don't know much about this project because whenever I ask he adopts a smirk and informs me I would be worried if I knew. The extent of my worry for him is that he is clearly suffering from arrested adolesence, and still imagines he is James Bond. As it is, I am highly concerned for my digital camera, which he has taken with him. My last one was stolen from me on a shoot in Kingston (Jamaica, not London), and if another one gets nicked in similar circumstances I'm going to be furious. Being a cameraman, he has about six digital cameras of his own, but apparently mine was the only one he was willing to risk on his dangerous mission.

This has worked out rather well, because has scored a double whammy of losing her job (redundancy) and breaking up with her boyfriend in the same week and is consequently sleeping on my sofa and taking the Kilburn air. Neither activity seems to be particularly benefiting her poor, addled state. It's working out reasonably well, though, which looks hopeful should we decide to flatshare together after the impending Move. Anyway, Cecile's initial stage of grief involved lying on the sofa listening to "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" by Dusty Springfield over and over again, which is a beautiful song but on loop it can only lower the spirits, what with all the drama over the Move. When I put my iTunes at her disposal (she and her boyfriend had made the frankly disastrous decision of having a joint iTunes, which now means it is entirely tainted for her, poor love), she just listened to Laura Marling's wonderful but really depressing album "Alas I Cannot Swim", which I would recommend in any circumstance other than having just lost job and boyfriend in one fell swoop.

Anyway, along with Cecile came The Wire boxset. It has sat for some days on top of my West Wing boxset. Whenever Cecile surfaces from her slough of despond, it is generally to berate me for not having cracked into it. How could I consider myself a true TV-phile if I didn't think The Wire had the edge on King Lear for drama?

The thing is, I don't dislike The Wire. I really don't. It is fantastically written, it is beautifully acted and the look of it is sensationally fresh and new. I don't dislike it. I just - and society has made me feel monstrously guilty for saying so - don't much like it. I rented the first series through LoveFilm and honestly, half the time I forgot I had the disc. I used to have to go through every possible prevarication before putting the damn thing in, and then when I had finished the disc I would take forever to put it back through. I don't exactly blame The Wire evangelicals for this reluctance, but it really did feel like work. The parts are marvellous, but the whole left me cold.

For me, television has to make you care deeply, profoundly, about what's going on. Dawson's Creek for example - terrible in almost every way - but when I was thirteen the sight of Pacey writing on a wall "Ask Me To Stay" for Joey set the bar for my romantic hopes for the future. In that sense -for me- Dawson's Creek is the more successful piece of television than The Wire. It stayed with me. Nothing about The Wire has stayed with me, really. Its technical achievements, I very much hope, will continue to be developed and taken on by series that have characters with a pulse, but McNulty etc don't do it for me. Each episode should grip you, both in and of itself and also create a lasting relationship with the characters - ask Charles Dickens. If I'm not frothing at the mouth with concern for McNulty, the job isn't done and I know the show isn't for me. Virginia Woolf once wrote that writers can build beautiful houses with their prose: "but what if life refuses to live there?" I feel like that with The Wire. That doesn't make me stupid. It just means it is possible for intelligent people to watch The Wire and not think it is the best thing ever on television.

The argument that it's too revolutionary to tick mainstream boxes doesn't wash. Other series have managed to break boundaries without having to create a UNESCO status for themselves, which is what the producers and stars of the thing have somehow managed. You don't like The Wire? That just means you're not recherche enough, is the general theme. Whatever. How good can a show actually be if no one watches it? Surely the only real measure of success is that people like your show and watch it - otherwise, what the hell are we making it for? This isn't high art, it's a business. Why don't UK companies make things like The Wire? people ask. Because no one would watch it. Would you want the BBC to spend millions on a programme 500,000 people would care about? People don't want The Wire on primetime.

The Wire is television made status symbol, and it's nauseating. Its more militant fans need to get it straight that to know it is not to love it, and it doesn't make you a better person if you do love it. It is actually really quite okay not to like it. Moaning about apparent unfairness of treatment is equally ridiculous. Bottom line: TV is about appealing to the masses. Fact.