The internet is awash with stuff on The Wire, but where to begin? For those of you with a bit of time on your hands, here’s a far from exhaustive reading list to keep you busy…

Official sites
The best place to start, of course, is the official HBO site, a one-stop shop for clips, interviews, photos and the like. Alternatively, for those determined to avoid spoilers and keep at the UK pace, try out FX’s site, which is also the only site we wan currently find where you can watch TV critic Charlie Brooker’s excellent documentary Tapping The Wire (click on the videos tab).

Primers
Wikipedia is as good a place to start as any, but all of the following are also worth checking out: Everything You Were Afraid To Ask About The Wire (salon.com); A Greek Tragedy On The Streets Of Baltimore (Spiked); Tapping Into The Wire (The Wall Street Journal); Ten Reasons Why The Wire Is The Best Show on Television (MSN).

General newspaper and magazine articles
There really are too many to list here, but here are a just a few of our favourites: The Wire Is Unmissable Television (The Guardian); High On The Wire (The Guardian again); The Greatest TV Show You’ve Never Seen (Daily Telegraph); Now Join The Cult (The Observer); Stealing Life (The New Yorker); What The Wire Reveals About Urban Journalism (Columbia Journalism Review).

David Simon interviews
The Angriest Man in Television (The Atlantic); Barbed Wire (The Daily Telegraph); David Simon Q&A (Alan Sepinwall); Getting Wired (The Guardian); Down To The Wire (Baltimore Magazine); Putting All The Pieces Together (Newsweek); The Man Who Made TV Great Again (The Dubliner); Cutting The Wire (salon.com); At Lunch With David Simon (The Financial Times); A Newspaper Can’t Love You Back (Esquire).

Cast interviews
OK, so who are you interested in? Michael K. Williams (Omar Little), Aidan Gillen (Tommy Carcetti), Jamie Hector (Marlon Stansfield), Idris Elba (StringerBell)? Or how about the incredible Felicia Pearson (Snoop), Dominic West (Jimmy McNulty), Wendell Pierce (Bunk Moreland), Clarke Peters (Lester Freamon), Andre Royo (Bubbles) and Tristan Wilds (Michael Lee)?

Fansites and blogs
So many sites, so little time… Play or Get Played is a longtime TV Spy favourite, with links to pretty much everything ever written about The Wire, while notable The Wire-focussed blogs that have caught our attention include The Wire F*cking Fan Club, Bubbles Depo, A Thousand Corners and The New Package.

Episode guides
You can find extensive episode-by-episode guides on the HBO site, Wikipedia, TV.com and TV Guide. For a slightly different take, we highly recommend the recaps at Television Without Pity.

Other random stuff
Find out what real-life thugs think about The Wire; go on location with producer Joe Chappelle; read the incredible story of Donnie Andrews, the real-life inspiration for Omar; marvel at Dominic West’s versatility as he discusses his directorial debut; see what The Wire’s characters would look like if they were in The Simpsons; and check out David Simon’s final thankyou to the cast and crew.

• Click here to read all our Countdown to series 5 of The Wire posts