It’s difficult to imagine that any crime drama could take the everyday drudgery of haulage work, transport contracts and shipping and make it compelling, but that’s what the second season of “The Wire” has achieved. Following on from the ground-breaking first series, which focused on Baltimore’s drug corners, the focal point of the cult HBO show moves to the dockyards and follows both the trucks leaving the docks, and drug use on the streets.
In a partial move away from the gangland corners, Season 2 of ‘the Wire’ is concerned with the complex dealings between the stevedores and the smugglers who operate in the shipping yards. In an ailing industry of stacking and unstacking cargo containers, where boats are unloaded and trucks begin the first stage of their haulage work contracts, the unit tracks the smuggled goods which come into the city of Baltimore.