HBO's cops-and-dealers drama "The Wire" is another one of those shows — with "Deadwood," and "Rome" (to be released on DVD on Tuesday) — that fans routinely cite as "better than 'The Sopranos.' " What's for certain is that "The Wire," created by "Homicide" producer David Simon, is more complex than "The Sopranos" or just about anything else on TV.

"The Complete Third Season" (HBO) moves the action back from the Baltimore docks, where most of Season 2 was set, to the inner city. It finds Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris) out of jail to discover his stand-in Stringer Bell (Idris Elba) has let a punk named Marlo (Jamie Hector) cut in on his territory. Complicating things further for good-guy detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) and his partner Kima Greggs (Sonja Sohn) is a plan by Maj. Bunny Colvin (Robert Wisdom) to set up a demilitarized zone where the drug merchants can do their business unmolested as long as they don't infringe on a community that wants no part of them.

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Continuing our vicarious life of crime, Spike Lee's "Inside Man" (Universal) was the surprise hit of spring. Denzel Washington stars as a New York detective who catches a Wall Street bank-robbery hostage case and discovers that the boss of the criminal crew (Clive Owen) is a formidable opponent with an agenda beyond riches.

Lee raises the stakes in an already entertaining film with observations on race and class that are well integrated into a more-clever-than-most story.

The primary attraction of the "Jayne Mansfield Collection" (Fox), a box containing three films starring the poor man's pinup, is the first official release of the 1956 CinemaScope hit "The Girl Can't Help It," one of the first and easily the best of the rock 'n' roll jukebox musicals. Directed by Frank Tashlin, the famous Warner Bros. cartoon producer and writer, it has Tom Ewell as a press agent hired to make a recording star out of a talentless gangster's moll (played by Mansfield). Between musical numbers, Mansfield has a terrific time spoofing her blonde bimbo image.

It is, of course, the music that makes the movie. It provided the first opportunity for most fans of the new music craze to actually see black performers like Fats Domino, the Platters and Little Richard — who performs the title song as well as "Ready Teddy" and "She's Got It." In the '50s, black performers weren't usually invited to perform on the network variety shows. These scenes, as well as rare film of Gene Vincent, may be familiar after being included in dozens of rock 'n' roll documentaries, but it's terrific to have them back in context.

Tashlin's 1957 follow-up, "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" may lack the rock music, but it's an equally entertaining look into 1950s pop culture. The film is based on a play about an ad executive (Tony Randall) trying to lure hot young sex symbol Mansfield into shilling for lipstick; she agrees if he'll pretend to be her new "lover doll" for the benefit of the press. Mansfield's husband, bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay, and Groucho Marx have cameos.

"The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw," from 1958 and directed by Raoul Walsh, has a similar mistaken-identity premise. It's a comic western in which an English gentleman (Kenneth More) is mistaken for a lawman and given the job of taming the feuding town of the title, while Mansfield is a saloon owner who easily tames him.

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