Every Season Of The Wire Ranked Worst To Best

Season three introduces Marlo Stanfield, and while the show is all about shades of grey as far as morality goes, the fledgling kingpin is as close as we get to an antagonist. He makes for a great foil, not just to the cops but to Avon and Stringer, who lose their grip on the city's drug trade.

The Hamsterdam plotline (in which rogue Major Colvin legalises drugs) feels fantastical but is in fact based on real events, and provides some of the most interesting social commentary the show had offered to date, with no easy answers or quick conclusions to be drawn.

The West Baltimore gang war makes up one of The Wire’s most exciting plots, and season three is certainly more action-heavy than most. The flashiness may not be quite to the taste of those who enjoyed the more methodical approach taken in the first two. However, for the same reasons, it’s not hard to see why this is many people’s favourite.

The politics storyline adds to the overall world Simon and Burns are building, and while it’s admittedly not the thrill ride of some of the other strands, it becomes increasingly more important for the story they’re trying to tell.