The Wire

PREMIERED June 2, 2002

THE SCOOP It didn't matter how many critics hailed HBO's revolutionary crime drama — each season depicted a different area of corruption in urban Baltimore, from the drug trade to the education system — as the ''best television show ever.'' Viewers and Emmy voters simply refused to tune in. For shame — especially in it's cracking debut year, which introduced troubled Irish cop Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West), his colleague Kima (Sonja Sohn), grizzled detective Lester Freamon (Clarke Peters), and their infamous underworld foils, dealers Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris) and Stringer Bell (Idris Elba), and series legend Omar (Michael Kenneth Williams), a gay gangster who steals from the drug lords to, well, give to himself. —Aubry D'Arminio