"The Wire is back---and brilliant as ever," says the San Jose Mercury News. Writing on the paper's website, Charlie McCollum calls The Wire "the great American novel" New York Times critic A.O. Scott has said has been lacking since World War II. The show, writes McCollum, "has managed to transcend the normal rules of television, exploring modern American urban life as fully, as ambitiously and as unflinchingly as any work of the written word."

For this, the show's fifth and final season, its creators have created "in the broadest sense ... the most realistic portrait of a newsroom ever seen on television," writes McCollum. And even for non-news junkies, "The Wire remains a truly compelling and epic exploration of a city with crackling dialogue (no show does street talk better), a sure sense of storytelling and ensemble acting that is intense and spot-on."

As McCollum sees it, it doesn't really matter whether you're a die-hard fan who's been in on the game from the start or new to it:

In the end, The Wire is extraordinary television. It has a richness, a depth and an intelligence that transcend the medium and makes it the kind of superb literature that A.O. Scott found lacking in the world of books.

To read the complete article, visit mercurynews.com.