The Wire definitely isn't for everybody. It's easily one of the most nihilistic shows around that barely has any levity at all. It's completely captivating if you enjoy watching human misery, pain, and despair as these characters slowly kill themselves, but for a lot of people it's like "why would you even want to watch that?" I personally loved the pilot, I love how it paints D'Angelo as this epitome of evil character beating the system and makes you just hate his guts, then to do a total 180 by the end of the season. I think the only thing that takes a little too long is getting the case going, when the detail really start to dig into the case, that's when the season and show REALLY gets captivating.
As far as Deadwood goes, it's a show I still need to finish. I started watching it around this time last year but ended up stopping because I started watching Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones, which really caught my attention. I did enjoy Deadwood, but their attention to detail in the diction and syntax of the characters' dialog did get a little confusing, well except for "cocksucker", I got that. I think my main criticism of the show though is they introduced the really interesting character of Seth Bullock, and then he only gets a small portion of the screen time. That's a pretty common thing though with HBO shows, you think the first character you're introduced to is going to be the main character and get the most screen time, but then the other characters are established and soon the sprawling stories start happening.
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