The Wire should have been far more popular than it was.

Granted it’s a cult favorite and critics love it, but the show never received the wide audience it deserved to. The show was robbed many times over for not rewarding the great writers and actors, but pop culture was an even greater causality as the failure of this show to catch on with a larger fan base prevented greater dialogue about the show’s gritty subject matter.

You can turn on the news to hear stories of drug-inspired violence and read the newspaper to read over a bunch of regurgitated statistics about city crime, but The Wire offered a human face to those stories.

If the show were more popular perhaps the conversations likely to be held in the Harvard class inspired by the show will now tackle.

Harvard University has announced plans to offer a course on the famed HBO series.

The class is intended to use the show to fuel a better understanding of how to combat real urban social issues like those featured in the Baltimore setting of the show.

Sociology Professor William J. Wilson told the Harvard Crimson, “‘The Wire has done more to enhance our understanding of the systemic urban inequality that constrains the lives of the poor than any published study.”

I minored in Sociology and I completely agree. If I didn’t hate student loans more than anything else on Earth I’d want to be in the class myself.

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They say life imitates art, so for all of you wannabe actors out there, try aiming for stints on Sesame Street. Every other show seems far too dangerous.

Jamie Hector, who played Marlo Stanfield on the cult-favorite The Wire, held a baby shower for his wife over the weekend. Unfortunately, there was a shooting outside of the building where the baby shower took place and resulted in the death of a 17-year-old.

The New York Daily News reports that while Hector’s wife and family were inside their Brooklyn party in East Flatbush when the gun fire erupted.

It seems the people poppin’ their guns on the block were on a mission.

The gunmen were so adamant about getting the job done that one of them actually followed his victim to the hospital and fired another shot at him to try and finish him off.

Cops found at least 46 shell casings in a half-block radius at E. 93rd St. and Avenue B.

Yikes. I’m sure Marlo would be proud; I would be ducking and running.

A police source told the Daily News, “What a gun battle. They have been watching too much TV.”

You think?

Live and learn, thespians. I never heard about Big Bird and Oscar the Grotch getting in a knife fight on in their hood.

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