Last night I read this draft essay on The Wire (which has a few 1st season spoilers, the author suggests that the “The Wire operates in a plot-driven mode that can easily be ’spoiled’ by any revelations in this essay” but I disagree)

For many critics, bloggers, fans, and even creator David Simon himself, The Wire is best understood not as a television series, but as a “visual novel.” … I believe that television at its best shouldn’t be understood simply as emulating another older and more culturally valued medium. The Wire is a masterpiece of television, not a novel that happens to be televised, and thus should be understood, analyzed, and celebrated on its own medium’s terms.

Which is totally right. Having said that the author goes on to have some fun by comparing it to a video game…

David Simon has suggested that the show’s goal is to “portray systems and institutions and be honest with ourselves and viewers about how complex these problems are” (Zurawik). While Simon imagines that the televised novel is the form best suited to accomplish such goals, in today’s media environment, videogames are the go-to medium for portraying complex systems. As Janet Murray writes, “the more we see life in terms of systems, the more we need a system-modeling medium to represent it—and the less we can dismiss such organized rule systems as mere games” (quoted in Moulthrop 64). If novels foreground characterization and interiority in ways that The Wire seems to deny, videogames highlight the complexity of interrelated systems and institutions that are one of the show’s strengths.
…
Many videogames are predicated on the logic of simulating complex systems, modeling an interrelated set of practices and protocols to explore how one choice ripples through an immersive world. We might imagine The Wire’s Baltimore as the televisual adaptation of the landmark game SimCity.

(obviously I take issue with the phrase mere games) Interestingly one of my first thouights when I started watching The Wire was that it really reminded me of Police Quest.

Anyway if The Wire is a show about the city of Baltimore and it’s structures and institutions rather than about any individuals (which I totally agree that it is) surely an excellent point of comparison is with Judge Dredd. As any 2000AD reader will tell you, that strip isn’t so much about Dredd as about Mega City one. Dredd, Anderson etc. are just our window into the structures, institutions, architecture, culture and society of that sprawling metropolis (and the wider world in which it’s situated). Having said that, the pacing of the two series couldn’t be more different. I’m always pleasantly surprised on returning to Dredd that it really is as densely inventive and manically action packed as I remember.