Tideswimmer asked, 'I wonder if either "The Sopranos" or "The Wire" would have the power to change someone's whole world view for life?'

The Sopranos, not really--from my viewing of it, anyway (I didn't follow it so closely in its last couple of seasons). Great entertainment at times, and extremely well done in many respects, but I didn't find it exceeding the bounds of entertainment.

But The Wire, change someone's worldview for life? Oh, indeed! I often come away from that show feeling that I've learned something substantial about how real-life society works, in areas I'd only guessed at before. It engages me on levels I just don't get from TV, rarely get from films, and only get from books when the books are damned good. And how rare to find anything that teaches so much without you having to force yourself to follow it!

From my discussions with people in local government and law enforcement, I actually have learned a lot: my guesses about real life events, informed by what I've learned from The Wire, match up with what they actually see in their jobs. It doesn't make me an expert on local politics, but I now have a decent (and realistic) intuitive grasp of that system, where I had none before. The show has changed the way I appraise the motives and effectiveness of how I see my city being run.

It takes the intellectual concept that government is a collection of overlapping, conflicting, self-interested hierarchies, and makes the nuances of that system tangible, in a way that you might need a decade of real-life experience to pick up otherwise--as well as teaching the cumulative impact of those forces on the lives and culture of citizens at the lowest rung of the economy.

As exciting melodrama, I think it falls a little short of the high water mark of the Sopranos; but if you take into account how much you actually learn from it, the overall experience (of seasons 3 and 4 in particular) is unmatched by anything else out there to date.