HBO'S `THE WIRE' KEEPS THE ELECTRICITY FLOWING.

Byline: David Kronke Television Critic

Critics gush about it; viewer turnout is unimpressive; not even the Emmys are impressed. Perhaps if reviews damned it for being brazenly titillating and puerile, audiences would turn out in droves.

But the truth is, ``The Wire'' is so exponentially better, so much more richly textured and realistic and ambitious than any other cop show. Perhaps that's its problem: Creator David Simon refuses to treat viewers as anything but intelligent adults capable of absorbing complicated, nuanced story lines, of keeping track of more than two dozen recurring characters, of immersing themselves in a world that is complex and not a little depressing.

What makes ``The Wire'' so rewarding is how it deftly and realistically portrays so many layers of society and illustrates how one influences the other. Set in the violent drug world of Baltimore's beleaguered Westside, the show weaves in and out of the lives of the drug dealers and the families they destroy, the cops in a patient yet unwinnable war and the politicians who tend toward inertia.

This season, the show adds another dimension: The essential hopelessness of the city's school system, burdened by sometimes inexperienced teachers unprepared for what they're getting themselves into and students who have given up on themselves. Roland Pryzblewski (Jim True-Frost), a cop in previous seasons, returns as a teacher whose learning curve in the classroom is almost as slow as his pupils.

The show follows four friends who aren't necessarily bad kids but have a knack for getting into trouble, extraordinarily played (as is virtually every role on the series) by Jermaine Crawford, Maestro Harrel, Julito McCullum and Tristan Wilds. When Roland locks his keys in his car, one of his students helpfully breaks into it for him.

Meanwhile, the Major Crimes unit -- which served as the show's heart in previous seasons -- is being systematically dismantled for political reasons, sending its detectives scurrying for other positions. And the campaign for a new mayor 7/8 Tommy Carcetti (Aidan Gillen) feels he's on a fool's errand running as a white mayoral candidate in the predominantly black city -- gets increasingly ugly.

(Election Day comes in episode six.)

Detectives Freamon (Clarke Peters) and Moreland (Wendell Pierce) are suspicious of the curious lack of corpses as drug lords' turf wars continue apace. Simon and his writers weave these and still more subplots in a novelistic fashion with some splendid touches, such as in tonight's episode, which juxtaposes scenes of teachers and cops sitting through seminars on different subjects yet united in their tedium and uselessness.

To really absorb the show's richness, episodes are best digested one after the other, so save them up, or consult HBO OnDemand if you have it. There, you'll feel the full measure of ``The Wire's'' central question this season: If the system has essentially given up on these kids, the show asks, what does society at large expect from them?

David Kronke, [phone]

david.kronke(at)dailynews.com

THE WIRE - Four stars

What: Further adventures on Baltimore's mean streets.

Where: HBO.

When: 10 tonight; also 11:30 p.m. Tuesday, midnight Wednesday, 10 p.m. Friday, 11 p.m. Saturday.

In a nutshell: Still the best cop drama on TV. So it goes with HBO's criminally underappreciated show.

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Roland Pryzblewski (Jim True-Frost) returns to ``The Wire'' this season as a teacher with a precipitously steep classroom learning curve. The season premiere is at 10 tonight.