24 Years Later, This Is Still TV’s Ultimate GOAT Debate (& There’s No Wrong Answer)

It has been 24 years since HBO premiered the show that many consider the GOAT of drama television series, but there is still an argument over whether it eclipsed the reigning GOAT at that time from the same network. It was on June 2, 2002, that The Wire debuted on HBO and started a debate that really has no wrong answers. The Wire vs. The Sopranos has become television’s ultimate “greatest of all time” argument, regularly topping critics’ best-ever lists. Both are HBO crime dramas that redefined what the medium could do, yet they did it in very different ways.

The Sopranos is the intimate antihero character study that launched prestige TV, while The Wire is the sprawling, epic portrait of a broken American city. The Sopranos won 21 Emmys, while The Wire never won any, but both shows deserve their spot at the top of the list. The debate is worth having, but it is an argument that will never see a winner.

Why The Wire Is the GOAT of Television Shows

The Wire premiered on HBO on June 2, 2002, and ran for five seasons and 60 episodes, ending on March 9, 2008. Created by David Simon, a former Baltimore Sun crime reporter, the show looks at the different institutions that ruled over the city, with a new one each season. The first season looked at the illegal drug trade, the second at the docks and the working class, and the third at city hall and politics. The fourth season looked at the public school system, and the final season focused on the print news media. Baltimore itself was the main character of the series.

The Wire had a massive ensemble cast that gave equal attention to the cops, drug dealers, dockworkers, politicians, teachers, and reporters, as they all tried to make their mark in the city. While the show received no Emmy awards and only two nominations (both for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series), the cast itself was more than deserving. This included names like Dominic West, Idris Elba, Wendell Pierce, Lance Reddick, Amy Ryan, Michael K. Williams, Chad Coleman, Isiah Whitlock Jr., and many more.

While the Emmys snubbed it regularly, it did win a 2004 Peabody Award and a 2008 Writers Guild of America Award for dramatic series. Rotten Tomatoes scores were almost unanimous, with the first season sitting at 86% fresh, the second at 95%, the third and fourth at a perfect 100%, and the fifth at 93%. The Wire also has a strong cultural footprint, with college teaching courses over the show, both as a storytelling device and as a study of urban inequality and its insight into systemic poverty.

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Why The Sopranos Remains the GOAT of Television Shows

However, for everything that The Wire did right, it was still hard to convince many television fans that it was better than The Sopranos. The Sopranos premiered on HBO on January 10, 1999, and ran for six seasons and 86 episodes through June 10, 2007. David Chase created the series and brought something very different to the gangster genre. While he owed a lot to the influence of The Godfather and Goodfellas, Chase chose to introduce Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) as a man who led both his mafia family while also trying to hold together his blood family, including his wife, two kids, vindictive mother, and uncle.

When The Sopranos started with Tony seeing his therapist, it proved that it was going to be like nothing else in the gangster genre. However, over time, it became the exact template that gangster movies and TV shows strove to match up to. This series was the HBO series that launched the prestige-TV era and the Golden Age of Television, directly inspiring The Shield, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and countless others, including The Wire.

The Sopranos also did something that The Wire couldn’t do. It wowed awards voters. While The Wire only had two Emmy nominations, The Sopranos won 21 Primetime Emmy Awards with 111 nominations across its run. It made history at the 2004 Emmys as the first cable series ever to win Outstanding Drama Series, and then it did it again in 2007. The cultural impact of The Sopranos changed television drastically, proving that it could match up to any movie and even eclipse most of them in prestige storytelling.

The Wire and The Sopranos are both widely considered the GOAT of television shows, and for good reason. The Wire looked at America through the lens of a city, Baltimore, and showed how corruption and greed could ruin so many lives, despite so many people trying to save it and lift it up. The Sopranos showed a conflicted man, someone who does evil things, but deep inside wants to be better, if only for his family. However, just like The Wire, this is not always possible in today’s society. One show influenced prestige television, and the other showed how far that idea could go. Both are GOATs in their own right, and there is no wrong answer to this debate.

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