Recollections of Notable Cops

"I knew cops who were matches for the most learned and unscrupulous lawyers at the Baltimore bar, and others who had made monkeys of the oldest and crabbedest judges on the bench, and were generally respected for it. Moreover, I knew cops who were really first-rate policemen, and loved their trade as tenderly as many art artists and movie actors. They were badly paid, but they carried on their dismal work with unflagging diligence, and loved a long, hard chase almost as much as they loved a quick, brisk clubbing."

H.L. Mencken (Newspaper Days, 1942)

One imagines that Mencken would be as impressed as any with The Wire, now into its fifth and last season, though it is another question whether he would recognise its depiction of his city a century on from his first days as a Baltimore journalist. While the massive, rotting projects and their sprawling, grinding heroin trade might represent something new to him, it's possible he would appreciate its portrait of bloated institutions and failing systems marred by conflict and grubby motives. This new season might be of particular interest to the great hack. After absorbing not just the intricate rivalries of the drug gangs and the police departments, but the starved, corrupt docker's union, the vicious politics of the City Council and Mayor's Office, and the creaking public school system, The Wire now shifts its attention to the workings of The Baltimore Sun, Mencken's old paper. We can expect more subtle comedy and morose reflections as the journalists work a losing battle against cutbacks and disinterest, and the manipulations of the city's other fine institutions. These hacks are well aware of their illustrious predecessor. In the latest episode, a recently laid-off Sun journalist recalls over a beer the epitaph: "If ever I depart this vale, and you wish to remember me, pardon some poor sinner and wink at a homely girl." "Fuck Henry Mencken," sympathises his colleague.

We are all blessed in that the new season was wrapped up in time to avoid the writers' strike, but I am already mourning its end. To be honest, it's probably even better than Deadwood. Here's Charlie Brooker explaining why.