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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TAGS: The Wire

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