The Corner


The Corner is a 2000 HBO drama television miniseries based on the nonfiction book The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood by David Simon and Ed Burns, and adapted for television by David Simon and David Mills. It premiered on HBO in the United States on April 16, 2000, and concluded its six-part run on May 21, 2000. The series was released on DVD on July 22, 2003. It won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries in 2000.
The Corner chronicles the life of a family living in poverty amid the open-air drug markets of West Baltimore. "The corner" is the junction of West Fayette Street and North Monroe Street .

Cast and characters

  • T. K. Carter as Gary McCullough, a drug addict; DeAndre's father, and Fran's ex-husband. He dropped out of college when Fran became pregnant and became addicted to drugs after their marriage ended.
  • Khandi Alexander as Denise Francine "Fran" Boyd, a drug addict; DeAndre McCullough and DeRodd Hearns' mother, and Gary's ex-wife. She lives in the "Dew Drop Inn" with her sisters, Bunchie and Sharry, brother Stevie, and his son.
  • Sean Nelson as DeAndre "Black" McCullough, a 15-year-old drug dealer; Gary McCullough and Francine "Fran" Boyd's son.
  • Clarke Peters as Fat Curt
  • Glenn Plummer as George "Blue" Epps
  • Toy Connor as Tyreeka Freamon
  • Maria Broom as Bunchie Boyd
  • Sylvester Lee Kirk as DeRodd, DeAndre's younger brother
  • Corey Parker Robinson as R.C.
  • Reg E. Cathey as Scalio
  • Rodney Scott as Little DeAndre
Many actors from The Corner had also appeared in Homicide: Life on the Street, which was adapted from Simon's book, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets. Similarly, many actors who appeared in The Corner later appeared in Simon's next television series, The Wire, often playing contrasting characters, e.g., Clarke Peters, Maria Broom, Corey Parker Robinson, Reg E. Cathey, Clayton LeBouef, Donnell Rawlings, Tootsie Duvall, Robert F. Chew, Lance Reddick, Delaney Williams, and DeAndre McCullough. Additionally, Alexander and Peters later starred in Simon's television series Treme, and DeAndre McCullough briefly worked for the show in set construction and on the security crew.

Episodes

Each episode starts and ends with a documentary style interview, wherein a lead character answers questions posed by the director, Charles S. Dutton.

Reception

Critical response

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 100% approval rating with an average rating of 10/10, based on 14 critic reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "Powerfully performed and authentically written, The Corner is an unwavering depiction of life under the thumb of addiction and poverty." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 90 out of 100 based on 21 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
A review by Hugh K. David of DVD Times praised The Corner as "raw, gritty, uncompromising, realistic, smartly directed, supremely well-acted, compulsively watchable, but harrowing and with little light at the end of the tunnel", comparing it to the television equivalent of such films as Last Exit to Brooklyn and Requiem for a Dream, with elements in common with both La Haine and City of God.

Awards

The miniseries received four Emmy awards nominations at the 52nd Primetime Emmy Awards. It won for Outstanding Miniseries; Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special ; and Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries or a Movie ; and was nominated for Outstanding Casting for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special. It also won a Peabody Award in 2000.

Related media

  • "Fifteen years after David Simon and Ed Burns spent a year chronicling an inner city neighborhood in Baltimore in the book and HBO miniseries "The Corner," Need to Know returns to see how life has changed for one of the main characters they profiled."
  • "Scott Simon returns to the inner city community in Baltimore that he first visited last fall to see if recent improvements in the economy are improving the lot of chronically under-employed and unemployed young African-American men there."