The Wire Reimagined as a Victorian Novel
Many people have likened bygone critical favorite The Wire to a Dickens novel, but Sean Michael Robinson and Joy Delyria went a step further and reimagined the series as an actual Victorian novel. The results and just as fantastic as the show itself.
Robinson and Delyria write a faux literary journal entry for The Hooded Utilitarian in which he positions The Wire as a forgotten serialized novel written by a contemporary of Charles Dickens, a fictitious author named Horatio Bucklesby Ogden.
The serial format did The Wire no favors at the time of its publication. Though critics lauded it, the general public found the initial installments slow and difficult to get into, while later installments required intimate knowledge of all the pieces which had come before. To consume this story in small bits doled out over an extended time is to view a pointillist painting by looking at the dots.
There are even illustrations of vigilante Omar and a famous crime scene investigation in the first season where McNulty and Buck only use the word "fuck" to describe what's going on. In Robertson's alternate history, these illustrations were done for the serialization of the novel by Baxter "Bubz" Black. So, how long before we can actually buy this illustrated version of The Wire? I'd put it on my Amazon wish list now if I could.
