REWIRED, ’7Os STYLE

Iknow a guy who knows a guy who apparently has a sharp Bengali intel critique of The

Wire. Frankly, I’d love to hear it. In the decade and a half since David Simon’s now legendary cops and dealers show lured my generation into that codependent cocktail of addictions, torrenting and bingewatching, Wire-love went from a mark of ‘insider connoisseurship’ to an eye-roll-inducing tautology.

The only reason I can talk about it now without going crosseyed myself, is the Hotstar debut of Simon’s new HBO series about the porn industry, The Deuce, which seems to have everyone wondering whether it will be the new Wire.

Fortunately that question recedes very quickly, as the pilot episode takes us through the windows of a Brooklyn dive bar and a classic noir-ish pre-credit sequence in which the show’s first protagonist Vincent (James Franco) is quickly dealt a hardboiled hero’s obligatory pistol-whipping. As night turns to day, we follow Franco to the mean streets of Manhattan, where prostitutes make their way home in bare feet, The Deuce reveals its spectacular mise-enscène. The pornographic playground of Times Square in the early 1970s unfurls to the blaring horns and wacka-chicka guitar of Curtis Mayfield’s If There’s A Hell Below…

You might see a subtle nod in that selection for the title credits (The Wire had another famous song of purgatory) but you’re more likely to be caught up in the period detail and the pale cinematic palette of the city, faded like old colour prints and the already rich cast of characters. There are standout scenes (at least three great ‘dialogues’) and there’s even a double role (Franco plays Vincent and his troublemaking twin Frankie, a deuce within the deuce). It may make you think of the other recent ’70s NYC series, Vinyl and The Get Down.

But despite the common thread of nostalgia porn, those two shows are cartoonish by comparison. The Deuce mixes its nostalgia with equal parts noir and gritty vérité. As for the porn, that’s what it’s all going to be about of course… n

DEUCE THE nostalgia mixes its parts with equal gritty noir and vérité