Well, there's no accounting for taste and ours may just be different :)

I think part of the reason it already appealed to me towards the end of the first season is just how gritty and bleak it was. I don't think there had been any other show at the time it was released that showed just how dark the social environment (or maybe Baltimore itself) really was and it focussed too on the day-to-day lives of people at all levels of the drug trade.

I think historic context is often a big influence when people recommend movies and TV shows.