A Wire Darkly
After many recommendations, we've begun watching season one of The Wire. For those of you who don't know this is a police drama from HBO by David Simon. Simon explains in the commentary that he and his writing partner Ed Burns wanted to explore the theme of institutional betrayal. The first season follows two sets of characters: One set in a gang of murderous drug dealers preying on several addiction and poverty-stricken neighborhoods the other is a strained police department which begrudgingly puts together a detail of narcotics and homicide detectives and other misfits to try and break up the gang and arrest it's leaders.
By some coincidence I happen to be reading Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly at the same time. Here Philip K. Dick explores the derangement of a policeman who is given the assignment of gathering evidence on his undercover identity as a drug addict at the same time, his drug of choice, "Substance D," has split his mind to carry out his dual roles while only vaguely aware of each other.