Is there life after The Wire?

I have just spent two days in a darkened room. The Curzon cinema in Soho, to be precise, where, along with a couple of hundred other enthusiasts, I sat through all 10 episodes of the fifth and final season of The Wire, which reached its broadcast conclusion on the FX channel this week.

Like some upmarket Star Wars convention, The Wire Weekender featured Q&As with creator David Simon and stars Dominic West and Clarke Peters; book and DVD signings; and a wake for a series that, courtesy of its many media admirers, has become a conversation staple at dinner parties, watercoolers and bus stops everywhere.

Though Monday's feature-length final episode pulled in only a meagre 36,000 viewers, The Wire is a show that has seeded in this country not via its television broadcasts on a hitherto obscure satellite channel, but via the internet and word of mouth, by the less-than-legal downloading of US episodes, and by the buying and borrowing of countless DVD box-sets. This week, all five seasons of the programme are in Amazon's UK top 20 DVD chart – and four are in the top 10.

Thus most of The Wire's British admirers have, until now, been following the show alone in front of small screens and on laptops, sharing the experience fleetingly with other fans only when they're certain everyone else is out of earshot, so as not to let slip any crucial plot-spoilers. Watching an entire season in a weekend is nothing new to us.

Kirsty Lang, presenter of Radio 4's Front Row arts programme and host of one of the weekend's Q&As, described herself as a member of the "cult", and it was a strange thrill to find myself worshipping The Wire in a cinema filled with fellow believers. Each twist and turn in the final episodes, as the many plots finally reached their climaxes, induced the sort of reactions that could only come from 60 full hours of emotional investment in the characters and their fates.

One audience member admitted to being a "Wire rookie" during a Q&A. You could barely hear his subsequent question for all the booing and hissing.

I was an early-ish adopter of The Wire and, like one of my fellow weekenders, nowadays find myself exasperated by having to make conversation with those who are still only midway through their friend's season two box-set. It means I can't discuss the wonders of plot and character in seasons three and four – the best seasons of what is undoubtedly one of the best pieces of television ever made – nor their thematic thrills. And I can't talk about how perfectly the show concluded, following a few minor stumbles in the final season, giving many characters a richly deserved resolution without ever weakening the show's sociopolitical impact.

The subject of The Wire is not simply cops and robbers, though you could be forgiven for thinking so after 10 minutes of season one. It was, in fact, conceived as an "anti cop-show" – the antidote to all the preposterous police procedurals that Simon (a former police reporter) and his co-writer Ed Burns (a former homicide detective) had watched with disdain before getting their hands on a television show of their own.

No; its subject is instead the life and slow death of the American city, courtesy of corruption, addiction and violence. But what is its object? Can a TV show change anything?

Simon told the weekender audience about a story he once wrote for The Baltimore Sun, about a basketball coach he'd caught red-handed engaged in some decidedly unsportsmanlike behaviour. The coach's reward for being caught was a new and more lucrative contract. It was the last time, Simon decided, that he would ever expect a story to make a direct difference.

But Clarke Peters, who played the laid-back detective Lester Freamon, suggested that if he had any hopes for The Wire's broader effect, it was that it might at least get people thinking – and talking – about the show's preoccupations far beyond Baltimore, where the show is set.

At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I was hooked on season three at the same time as a spate of youth shootings took place across south London last year. Characters in The Wire had come up with imaginative ideas to combat just such a problem on their streets, only to see them sacrificed at the altar of political expediency. If nothing else, the show gave me a new perspective on a real-life issue, 3,000 miles away from Maryland. It made me think – and what more can one ask of a television show?

If the audience at the weekender, or the contributors to the countless articles, blogs and books spawned by the show, are anything to go by, the collective experience of watching The Wire has many other people thinking, too: about the issues, yes, but also the power of television drama when it's done right. (Among those blogs is one by Sudhir Venkatesh for The New York Times, who watched the final season in the company of fans from real New York gangs.)

If you've never seen The Wire, I envy the televisual pleasures that await you. Just don't go reminding me of how impossible it is to watch fewer than three episodes per sitting, or of the wealth of classic characters, or of how magnificently Simon and his co-writers captured the life of the city, from its streets to its schools to its police precincts, and all the way to city hall. You'll only go and make me sad.

WHAT'S NEXT FOR 'WIRE' WEEKENDERS?

Generation Kill
HBO, home to 'The Wire' and many other magnificent dramas ('Deadwood', 'The Sopranos', 'Six Feet Under'), gave the 'Wire' creators David Simon and Ed Burns their latest commission. 'Generation Kill' (right) is a seven-part miniseries based on the book by the 'Rolling Stone' journalist Evan Wright, who went into Iraq with one of the first Marine units in 2003. It deals with the same period of American history as 'The Wire', and has similar themes: individuals within an institution, and how human failings can cripple even a perfectly designed system. Simon also told the audience at The Wire Weekender that he was developing a series about New Orleans musicians after Hurricane Katrina. 'Generation Kill' will be broadcast in the UK early next year on FX.

Homicide: Life on the Street
'Homicide: Life on the Street' ran on NBC and Channel 4 between 1993 and 2000. It was based loosely on David Simon's award-winning non-fiction book 'Homicide', which he wrote while a reporter for 'The Baltimore Sun'. A police procedural following the detectives of a Baltimore homicide squad, it was released last year on DVD, and is a passable fix for Wire addicts. Simon's book, for which he spent a year embedded with a real homicide squad, has been republished by Canongate.

Breaking Bad
Starting on FX at 10pm on Sunday, 'Breaking Bad' is an acclaimed US drama about a high-school science teacher who learns that he is terminally ill and decides to become a drug trafficker in order to leave his wife and disabled child a decent inheritance. Made by AMC, the cable channel responsible for 'Mad Men', 'Breaking Bad' stars Bryan Cranston from 'Malcolm in the Middle'. Cranston (below) was a surprise winner of the best actor Emmy this week.

The Devil's Whore
Dominic West, the British actor known to 'Wire' fans as Detective Jimmy McNulty, is turning his hand to period drama for Channel 4 in November, playing Oliver Cromwell in the four-part miniseries. Also starring in the £7m drama – which begins before the English Civil War in 1642, and ends with the restoration of the monarchy 18 years later – are John Simm, Peter Capaldi and Andrea Riseborough.