I love Spiral and have watched every episode of all 8 series (baring last Sundays which I haven't had a chance to yet), but it isn't a patch on The Wire. It isn't even trying to be. It's a police/justice system procedural, that happens to follow that in a different nation. You get very little sense of the motivation and situation of the criminals, or that they are humans too. I wouldn't have said doing that is sentimentality. It's just being complete.
Spiral is obviously a much superior show to Law and Order, but in essence that is what it is similar to. The Wire is an entirely more ambitious beast. About the only other show I can think of that brought a wholly different aspect into a police show in the way The Wire does was The Killing, which showed at great length and depth the effect of the crime on the victim's family (actually not something The Wire covers particularly, so maybe it isn't complete after all).
Spiral is obviously a much superior show to Law and Order, but in essence that is what it is similar to. The Wire is an entirely more ambitious beast. About the only other show I can think of that brought a wholly different aspect into a police show in the way The Wire does was The Killing, which showed at great length and depth the effect of the crime on the victim's family (actually not something The Wire covers particularly, so maybe it isn't complete after all).
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