The beauty of bad language

So I’m now in Wire withdrawal, having just gorged on Season Four, which followed four teenage boys, all students at an inner-city school, as they came of age in ways that were sometimes funny, sometimes sad and sometimes shocking, but were always unpredictable. It’s a testament to the brilliant writing in this show that the four boys covered between them most of the familiar bases of disadvantage – their backgrounds included criminal, drug-addicted, neglectful and abusive parents – and yet they were real boys first and foremost. In the end just one of them appeared to have escaped the street corner spot he had initially seemed destined for, and you had the sense that he’d always hanker after it.

That was the only note of hope in the conclusion; otherwise it was pretty unrelievedly tragic. Ultimately, tragedy is what The Wire excels at – the complicated, quotidian tragedy of unfulfilled promise. Life is likely to be nasty, brutish and short; destiny – whether that boils down to character or environment, or the interaction of both – is inescapable; and then, possibly sooner rather than later, you die. It’s not all bad of course – the old-fashioned male virtues of honour and camaraderie might not save you, but they’ll ensure that you’ll be missed.

To be more precise, it’s like the Jacobean revenge tragedies in its darkness and humour, its compelling villains, its high body count and its interest in corruption. Also in the great death speeches it sometimes allows its characters before they go down, as if approaching the exit gave them a sudden boost of sagacity.

Characters in The Wire sound sage more often than characters in any drama I’ve ever seen. It’s not all in the writing – much of it is in the delivery, and it’s inimitable. The writing works by being sparse and punchy and funny; the delivery gives the words their exact right weight. It’s the inverse of the fast-patter, ultra-verbal style of a show like, say, Studio 60.

And it really does elevate swearing to an art form. Who could forget the scene where Bunk and McNulty pace out a crime scene and figure out exactly how a murder was committed, their manoeuvres punctuated only by an exchange of astonished exhortations: ‘Fuck me.’ ‘Fuck me.’ ‘Fuck me!’