THE WIRE: Drama series. 10 p.m. Sundays, HBO

Two stories in Wednesday's paper couldn't have benefited HBO's sterling new cop show, "The Wire," any better. One said the FBI was shifting its priorities toward the war on terrorism, and the result would be a reduction in the war on drugs. A second noted that the government's National Drug Control Strategy was failing -- messages aimed at youth were going unheeded.

Cut to the dangerous drug- and murder-filled streets of Baltimore, the setting for HBO's latest entry into the crime-and-punishment genre, where the drug war is still a very big deal. There is a scene -- written and filmed long before the FBI's announced redirection -- where a crack dealer's apartment is wired with fiber-optic cameras and hidden microphones. The warrants are in place. The infiltration leads all the way back to New York. When the bust comes, it's going to be huge. But it's also going to be the last one. The government agent notes, with some regret, that in a post-9/11 world, drug crimes are no longer a priority.

To Detective James McNulty (Dominic West) of the Baltimore homicide

unit, drugs and murder are a way of life, a daily battle. Not long before that scene, he has set in motion the brilliantly nuanced machinations of several intersecting law enforcement agencies, which form the backbone of "The Wire," just the latest offering from HBO that makes you shake your head at the level of quality the channel continues -- seemingly effortlessly -- to churn out.

It should surprise no one that just when the broadcast networks have decided the country wants one-episode, closed-ended story lines, HBO goes in the opposite direction with stunningly great execution.

"The Wire" is a 13-episode drama series that delves into the morass of the drug world from every angle. This is no simplistic good-guy, bad-guy story so common in this genre. Instead, writers David Simon and Edward Burns (HBO's "The Corner," based on the book they wrote together) flesh out all sides -- those in narcotics and homicide in the Baltimore Police Department, the dealers running the Westside projects as efficiently as the Mafia, the judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers, the culture surrounding each and, most important, the choking bureaucracy that plagues each. Yes, even the dealers.


From that you should glean that "The Wire" is going to be complicated and involved, like a good book -- which it is. Simon, who also wrote the book that "Homicide: Life on the Street" was based on, was a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun for 13 years. He has a keen sense of detail and an awareness that not everything is black and white on either side of the crime-and- punishment story. "The story is rooted in the verisimilitude of police work, but it's not really a cop show in the traditional sense," Simon said. "We're taking a look at institutions -- and the drug war has become just that -- and what those institutions do to the people who serve them."

Here's the critical translation to that: The man has written a damn good series that goes beyond a mere cop show.

"The Wire" centers on Detective McNulty, who used to work the Westside projects. In the pilot, he sits in on a murder trial the D.A. thinks is a lock -- but one a powerful drug lord manages to flip. The third one, actually. McNulty tells the judge later that there are at least 10 unsolved murders that may be linked to an emerging crime ring and points out that the judge just got played in his own courtroom.

Once the judge -- with political heft -- burns up the phone lines, narcotics, homicide, the D.A. and others have been scolded into action. But as everyone covers their backside, McNulty knows that the drug crew, headed by Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris) is far smarter and better organized than the cops give them credit for, and that the only way to root them out is to get in deep -- something there's no money or passion for.


What Simon and "The Wire" are getting at here is failure and stagnation, routine and a way of life for several entities that amount to nothing more than the daily grind in the drug war. There's much that resonates here more powerfully than in your tidy beat-down and lock-'em-up broadcast story line.

There are hints of "EZ Streets" here for fans who can remember that bleak and doomed CBS offering years ago. But the complexity in "The Wire" goes even deeper. Maybe cable, with FX's "The Shield," is starting to steal the thunder from aging network standard bearers "NYPD Blue" and all those "Law & Order" spin-offs. But leave it to HBO, late to the genre, to come in and add more heft, make the moral waters more murky, all with superb acting and smart, real dialogue. The network has added another gem to its lineup of original programming, and its success rate is staggering.

So you know where to plant yourself on Sunday and whom to thank for saving the summer. Just don't expect an easy resolution in this latest reworking of cops and crooks.