Team work and The Wire

BBC Two recently (beginning of last week) began showing HBO's The Wire in its entirety, starting at season one, in a graveyard slot on weekday nights. 11.20pm to be precise.

Having heard a lot about this show in one way or another (from colleagues on TV Scoop, various Internet forums and reviews, and fanboy family members *vbg*) I was keen to see what all the fuss was about, but 11.20?? Old farts like me have usually been in bed an hour by then. So we did the only thing possible: set a weekday schedule on the PVR and sat back while the episodes were sucked in.

I tried to approach the show with no preconceptions, despite my natural inclination to dislike anything that "everyone else" likes. This is not to disrespect anyone's opinion, it's just that in my experience entertainment surrounded by steaming piles of hype usually resembles steaming piles of something else when you eventually get to see it. I should have detected a subtle difference in the hype associated with The Wire: it's generated by the people who actually watched the show, rather than the people who made it and WANT you to watch it so they can make more money.

Anyway, we caught the first five episodes back-to-back last weekend, and the first two of this week's last night. Seven hours in and we're enjoying it immensely. So far I wouldn't be as fulsome as many have been with my praise - I wouldn't say I'm 'hooked' or that it's 'the best TV show ever, bar none' etc - but hey, it's still only the first season, and still only the first seven eps. It's certainly different, credible, realistic, interesting, involving and dramatic.

But this isn't strictly a post about The Wire (although so far it's doing a good impersonation of one, lol). It's about something that occurred to me while I was watching the show last night. There's a character in the cops' team called Prez. Roland Pryzbylewski, actually, which explains why they call him Prez. He's well known in the police department for being totally incompetent and inept. Despite being bounced around several units he never fits in anywhere, and he only ends up on the "wire" team because the Deputy Commissioner tells all his people to dump their useless jerks there.

But slowly, working in the team's basement office, something happens. Prez finds his niche and turns into the team's code-breaker, first with the gang's pager codes and later with other complex number and letter combinations. He makes a major contribution to the case.

This is classic team work. A team - a good team that is - comprises a group of people whose skills are complementary. A leader. An ideas man. Someone who pays attention to the details and doesn't miss the finer points. Someone who energises the whole team with enthusiasm. A problem solver. And so on. Occasionally, people perform more than one role, but all roles are essential and the team flies best when they're all done well.

But here's the thing. Each one, on their own, can't cut it. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And that's why Prez is such a good example. Outside of the team he's a jerk. A square wheel. But he's like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle left out of the box. Once you slot him into place, the whole thing looks right.

And it came to me, finally, that this is why I used to love my job, and why I hate it now. I used to be part of - and ENJOY being part of - a team. We could fly. We could do anything. And we did. But now there are no teams; there are only individuals. Everyone is expected to do their own thing. To be able to pick up any piece of work and do it just as effectively as any other piece of work. I mean, it's all technical stuff, right? That's how the managers look at it. We're technical people, doing technical work, so we're all just as good at any of it as anyone else. Which, as I hope you can appreciate, is a crock of shit.

There is no teamwork any more, and it sucks.