Where can I stream The Wire?

The Wire streams on HBO Max. It ran for 5 seasons (2002–2008).

Official theatrical poster for The Wire (2002)

HBO

CrimeDrama HBO Max Editor's Pick

The Wire

Q: Is The Wire worth watching?

The Wire has a Celluloid Score of 93%, averaged from critic reviews, audience ratings, Metascore, IMDb, and fan ratings. It comes recommended overall. Created by David Simon.

Created by David Simon · 2002–2008

Quick Verdict

The Wire has a 93% Celluloid Score — our average across critic reviews, audience ratings, Metascore, IMDb, and fan ratings. Celluloid Pick — recommended. Streaming on HBO Max.

93%

Celluloid Score Celluloid Pick

Averaged from 5 sources

94%Critic Score

96%Audience

88Metascore

9.3IMDb /10

96%Fan Score

Seasons: 5 · 60 episodes
Network: HBO Max
Cast: Dominic West, Idris Elba, Michael K. Williams, Wendell Pierce, Sonja Sohn

Is The Wire worth watching?

Yes — The Wire earns a 93% Celluloid Score. Celluloid Pick, created by David Simon and streaming on HBO Max.

Critics Consensus

Often called the greatest television drama ever made — a sprawling, unsentimental sociological epic that treats a whole city as its protagonist and refuses every easy consolation.
Celluloid Critics Consensus

What is The Wire about?

Across five seasons, a Baltimore drug investigation widens into a panoramic portrait of an American city — its police, docks, schools, politics and press — dramatizing with novelistic rigour how institutions fail the people inside them.

Critic Reviews

critic The Wire

The Wire Review: A Whole City as the Protagonist

★★★★★ 5/5

HBO's The Wire widens a Baltimore drug case into a five-season sociological epic — police, dealers, dockers, teachers, politicians and journalists — dramatizing with novelistic rigour how institutions grind down the people inside them.

The most ambitious and clear-eyed drama American television has produced — a devastating study of systems and the human cost of their failure. A masterpiece.