Partly thanks to the Guardian, who are streaming the first episode, The Wire is starting to lose its cult status in the UK, and an unstoppable bandwagon towards mainstream popularity is seemingly under way.

"The most critically acclaimed television show in the history of the medium." "If Dickens were alive today, he'd be writing for it." "The best TV show of the last 20 years."

In the face of such solemnity, only some species of eccentric could dislike it. My friend is obsessed with The Wire and has been for the past couple of years and I've resisted, until the Guardian put it up free. So I watched it.

And you know what - I'm not surprised that the programme got rave reviews by middle-aged blokes. Because to appreciate The Wire, it really helps to be cerebral, probably middle-aged, and above all male.

Watching it, I felt utterly exhausted. Charlie Brooker makes three good points:

• You have to be patient, as it is like a novel and we are used to instant gratification from TV. • Concentrate: don't be fazed by the slang. • Prepare to obsess.

OK, that last one's the bit I can't deal with. I don't want to obsess about the programme because I don't actually like it and here are the reasons why:

• It is misogynistic. All the main characters are men, apart from one woman. It is a world of men, in which many of the women are portrayed as subservient, lap-dancing gangsters' molls. The Wire is popular among men for the same reason that war films are - it is telly that makes no pretence of attracting women viewers, and for that, reviewers celebrate it. Mums, wives, sisters, female detectives, female cops, all seem to be bizarrely absent in its first episode. The Wire is proclaimed for its grit; its supposed realism, "the most hardboiled TV show ever" said one fan. So if you're a middle-aged British bloke, denied the wars of his grandfathers, denied the elemental violence of American culture, The Wire is great; it's about men who have some kind of meaning in their lives. Charlie Brooker's comment that many men are in love with Stringer Bell is revealing: The Wire is homoerotic in its message that men's lives are lived to the fullest when they are unencumbered by women. Relationships with women that aspire to equality are always, in The Wire, a source of angst and hassle: witness McNulty's problems with access and maintenance at the hands of his unreasonable ex-wife; or the difficulties faced by Daniels and Kima at the hands of their female partners.

• For white British men, The Wire's handling of race is also part of its attraction. No city in the UK is like Baltimore, with such a massive black population. So no white British men have to negotiate the minority status faced by white men in Baltimore. The white characters in The Wire inhabit - usually - a sort of post-race world, where friendships and enmities with black men are denuded of racial tension. There are questions about how realistic this is, but for the purposes of the show, race in The Wire is a background hum rather than a dominating theme. When, in season three, a white detective kills a black colleague, under the mistaken belief he's a criminal, the "racial element" (as it's referred to) of the resulting controversy is shown as something unreasonable. In Britain, there has never been a TV drama with a majority black cast that has been critically acclaimed. This is itself a comment on television, and it helps to explain why The Wire has a shock of the new, which can sometimes gloss over its defects.

• To enjoy The Wire, you need to be desensitised to screen violence. Otherwise you simply feel drained after an hour of it. Charlie Brooker says it's like a novel - yeah right. A novel you can put down, but with The Wire you have to see it through the hour-long episode because it is so good, but it's not enjoyable. I suppose the programme is like Shakespeare: you know it's good but do you really want to read the whole of Richard III from beginning to end?

Compared to most stuff on TV, it's even brilliant. But "greatest ever"? Sorry, Jon, but it isn't that good - and guess what? Unless you're a middle-aged, middle-class white bloke you might not even like it! I have said my piece, I have lit the fuse, and now I retreat.