The Wire as Greek/Shakespearean tragedy

Yesterday I did scarcely anything apart from watch 6 episodes of series one of The Wire (the remaining of the series) back to back. As I watched, it struck me that the show's broader canvas is to convey both the decline of the American Empire and explore the tragedy of African American /white American working class life. The tragic aspect seemed partly Shakespearean, partly Greek (what else of course?). There's definitely a sense of both the insight and blindness each character has about their role in "the Game" - an uncanny blurring between the sense of pre-destined fate and utter ignorance of what might happen next.

Moreover, to add to the texture, the show is not averse to comic counterpoint digressions - witness Herc and Ellis' routines, and the scene where McNulty and Bunk investigate an old crime scene and communicate using only variations of the word 'fuck'. Perhaps best of all however is the language of the show - a whole world of Baltimore slang emerges which creates both a strong sense of place as well as an almost complicit intimacy between the Barksdale crew and Daniel's "detail".
It was gratifying to read the show's creator, David Simon, being quoted in similar fashion (here):

In creating “The Wire,” Simon said, he and his colleagues had “ripped off the Greeks: Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides. Not funny boy—not Aristophanes. We’ve basically taken the idea of Greek tragedy and applied it to the modern city-state.” He went on, “What we were trying to do was take the notion of Greek tragedy, of fated and doomed people, and instead of these Olympian gods, indifferent, venal, selfish, hurling lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no reason—instead of those guys whipping it on Oedipus or Achilles, it’s the postmodern institutions . . . those are the indifferent gods.”

There is more analysis of the show here, including analysis of its form as a 'visual novel'.