The Wire is not only one of the best shows to ever air on television, but it’s also one of the most important pieces of pop culture in American history. Overlooked upon release, the Baltimore-set HBO crime drama by David Simon explores police procedure, the drug trade, politics, education, and journalism with the vigor of a riveting novel and the precision of a tell-all documentary.
What happens in The Wire, a series framed around the systemic failure and neglect of our most trusted institutions, represents America in the 21st century, where we’ve seemingly lost our way. Before aspiring to such lofty heights, Simon, a former Baltimore Sun crime reporter, cemented his journalistic voice for an HBO miniseries that aired two years before The Wire‘s premiere. Based on a book by Simon and Ed Burns, The Corner, which features various cast members and hallmarks of its spiritual successor, is every Wire obsessive’s next watch.
‘The Corner’ Laid the Groundwork for ‘The Wire’
From the outset, Simon aspired to forever alter the fabric of the television medium, which was then dominated by sensationalized police procedurals and lurid cop thrillers. His journalistic instincts first pushed the boundaries of network dramas on Homicide, also based on a book by Simon. He took things to an even grittier and unflinching scale with The Corner, a six-episode miniseries about the life of an impoverished family amid the rampant drug trade in West Baltimore that became the prototype for The Wire.
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Airing on HBO in 2000, The Corner follows Gary McCullough (the recently deceased T.K. Carter), his ex-wife Fran Boyd (Khandi Alexander), and their son DeAndre (Sean Nelson), whose lives have crumbled after his parents succumb to drug addiction. The street-wise and assured DeAndre must hold his own against the perils of the slums of Baltimore, as his quest for education and familial stability is compromised by the alluring pathway to dealing drugs — a quicker way to earn some much-needed cash for the family. Fans of The Wire will take delight in seeing familiar faces in the cast, including Clarke Peters, Lance Reddick, Corey Parker Robinson, Robert F. Chew, and Delaney Williams. Every episode is directed by prolific character actor Charles S. Dutton.
David Simon Revolutionized Gritty Television With HBO’s ‘The Corner’
As expected, The Corner, which won an Emmy for Outstanding Miniseries, raises the bar for grittiness, making The Wire look like a glossy Hollywood soundstage musical. Something with this much grain and visual grime making it to a mainstream platform on HBO spoke to the channel’s artistic fearlessness and curiosity. Sentimentality is nowhere to be found in the series, with Simon and Burns crafting this unforgiving world with the sobering authenticity it deserves. Showrunners tend to find some unseemly fetishization with neighborhoods hindered by poverty and crime, but the duo’s background in journalism and law enforcement allows Baltimore to appear mundane and a reflection of decades’ worth of government neglect. Simon and Burns exhibit restraint on their own end, as they limit their scope to the troubles of DeAndre and his run-ins with the drug trade, which makes this weighty treatise on the decay of urban America into an intimately constructed character drama.
With The Wire, David Simon, thanks to contributions from Hollywood directors like Ernest Dickerson and crime novelists like Richard Price, sharpened his abilities as a dramatist and narrative storyteller, attributes that eased the show into the good graces of casual TV audiences. The Corner is less engaging on an emotional level for the audience, as everything on screen is more or less a reflection of a pre-existing world. Thanks to Dutton’s narration and interviews with the subjects, the series never lets you gloss over the text’s nonfictional roots. In the shadow of the “hood” crime thrillers of the ’90s, drug-running and activity in the projects were lurid cinematic devices, but Simon urges the audience that this downtrodden lifestyle could happen to anyone, including Gary, who once lived an upstanding, healthy middle-class life.
Things that would’ve been marginalized or cheapened in other shows are treated with austerity in The Corner, particularly the characterization of DeAndre, a teenager who carries the burden of his entire family. Dabbling in illicit crime circles is a punishing, necessary evil for DeAndre, and not a proud demonstration of his independence and toughness. Sean Nelson’s performance retroactively works as a composite of some of The Wire‘s most conflicted characters, from the street’s Robin Hood, Omar Little (Michael K. Williams), to the matured corner veteran, Bodie (J.D. Williams). DeAndre is emblematic of the modern-day Greek tragedy that is the average urban neighborhood in America. He is forced to engage with the American Dream as a survival tactic.
