The Wire, German style
We have just finished Season Two of The Wire. It's one of the finest TV series ever made. The finest, perhaps. By the way, it takes its name from the use of electronic surveillance technologies by the police, and some commentators have described the title as a metaphor for the viewer's experience: the wiretaps give the police access to a secret world, just as the show gives us access to the shadow world of surveillance. In fact, executive producer David Simon has said that the constant shots of spying equipment, or scenes that appear to be captured using the equipment itself, highlight the volume of surveillance in modern life. Someone's watching, listening, recording. Always.
Which brings us to Deutsche Telekom, a former state-owned German telecoms monopoly, which is still the largest of its type in the European Union. The company is now being investigated by prosecutors following allegations that it hired a firm to comb the phone records of journalists, company executives and supervisory board members suspected of news leaks. So, the guys who own "the wire", so to speak, might have seen The Wire in the US (it has not been shown in Germany) or got the DVDs and started thinking... "Yo! We could be doin' that. And we got the gear, too, bro."
All that's needed now is for German television to run with the ball and turn this into the kind of compelling drama that HBO appears to create with ease. Except that it won't, of course. The poodle public segment of the medium is totally politicized and terrified that its political masters might not approve a hike in the "tax" that funds its sybaritic lifestyle. Instead, it will continue to pulverize vast amounts of money on producing some of the most awful programming in the world. The standard drama goes like this: handsome (always) widowed writer/doctor/architect/professor goes to idyllic seaside/mountain village to deal with his existential suffering. Upon entering the bakery (it's always the bakery) he bumps into a local beauty, who is raising three (always) gorgeous (always) children on her own since her husband was killed while trying to rescue a dog/pony from a burning farmhouse/orphanage. Thirty minutes later, the two enjoy a bottle of Burgundy (never Riesling) and the viewers are treated to some gratuitous nudity. Come the end, it's happy families and everyone in the jolly parish turns up for the wedding in the old church on a sunny (always) afternoon. And so on and on, week after week. Always.
It's a far cry from the dysfunctional world featured in The Wire where the police department, the school system and the unions are as corrupt as the drug business. When we get to Season Three, we might find that the telecoms companies are just as mendacious. It's great storytelling. Always.
