While Simon expressed an “amused contempt” for fans who walked “sideways” into the challenging show long after its five-season run had concluded, what he was really decrying was a certain website’s Wire-based bracket specifically, and the post-mortem dumbing down of the series in general. One imagines, then, that Simon would look kindly (to the extent that he can look kindly) upon “Style in The Wire,” a video from a Norwegian academic that breaks down the look and filmmaking techniques of the acclaimed series in painstaking detail. Even–or especially–a creative stickler of Simon’s caliber would surely appreciate the thoughtful homage to uncompromising creativity that the video represents.

Created by Erlend Lavik, who hails from the Department of Information Science and Media at the University of Bergen, Norway, “Style in The Wire” dissects the beloved show from the standpoint of visual style–the filmmaking philosophy and camera techniques used to tell the stories of Baltimore’s hardest men and women.

Lavik begins by making the point that though the TV show as an entertainment form has ascended in the cultural ranks and is now commonly dubbed “better than movies,” this rise in station has little to do with the visual style of the shows. When TV is good, in other words, it’s typically down to the medium’s particular capacity for narrative and character development.

And here he turns his attention to The Wire, a show he identifies as the “crown jewel” in the golden age of TV. Like anyone else, Lavik admits that The Wire’s greatest achievements were in dialog, character, and plot, but then goes on to make an argument that the show’s unusual and disciplined shooting style contributed, seamlessly, to the impact of the end product. The result of this style was a show that allowed viewers the satisfaction of discovering the beauty of a story, instead of having it explicitly and repeatedly pointed out to them.

“For several years now, I’ve had an interest in the potential that digital technology has to reinvigorate film and television criticism,” says Lavik of his labor-intensive project. “I had sought to explore this in a couple of academic articles, but realized that theoretical speculations only take you so far, and decided it was time to put my money where my mouth is. I chose The Wire partly because it is a series that I admire a lot, and partly because I’m writing a book on the show, so I had already done much of the research.” Lavik says the show’s visual style had been neglected by critics but the topic itself was a good vehicle for him to explore the video essay format. “Literary critics have always been able to do this, of course, and now finally film critics can do the same. It can be very awkward to write about film style without recourse to the visuals, so the video essay should enable us to analyze film and television’s artistic means of expression in more nuanced and accessible ways than before.”

The great thing about Lavik’s video is that it itemizes and demonstrates the creative decisions–imperceptible to the “average viewer”–that made the show excellent. But it also provides a powerful demonstration of the monumental effect that those seemingly small creative decisions have on any creative end product.