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After three episodes of The Corner (I am trying to ration them a bit) I can report that it’s pretty good.

For The Wire fanatics, it’s the undeveloped low-budget version. It would probably seem really good if The Wire didn’t exist. This series allowed us to get The Wire in its full glory, so even if it was rubbish it would be worth watching.

Each episode in the series takes a Baltimore individual and shows his or her story, with a focus on the dissolution of the neighbourhoods. The actions and the dialogue can be as witty as parts of The Wire. Central concerns are the same, with a focus on how the family reproduces the fractured relationships of the neighbourhood, similar to the focus on the kids in Wire Series 4. The street shots are the same neighbourhoods used in the Wire. Lots of the action takes place in the Series 3 Hamsterdam area. Many of the same production team were also involved, and some stylistic marks of the Wire, such as the introductory quote and the good credits music are present in embryonic form

Most of the cast are the actors who appear in The Wire, often cast in diametrically opposed roles. Several Central Wire police are street addicts or dealers in The Corner. The Series 4 headmistress is a clam shop supervisor. Avon Barksdale is hustling for scrap to sell, and so on. This adds another level of entertainment value that can not have been foreseen by the original team. You can watch it, picking out actors and trying to remember who they were. For instance, I think I saw Method Man in there. I have a suspicion that one character is an unfeasibly young version of the main female police officer from the original team - the one who gets moved to Homicide in Series 5, as part of the first Mayor’s plan to sink the expanding investigation in the period leading up to an election.

The focus on individuals builds up into a composite picture, with each person forming a part of the others’ stories and each instalment sheds more light on the previous episodes.

When compared to the Wire, it is less than satisfying. The stories (so far) are unremittingly dismal, focusing only on those at the bottom of the heap, the moralising is too overt and the characters aren’t consistently strong enough to carry so much interest. The Wire has such an incredible array of fascinating morally complex characters from all social levels that this series can’t compete with its scope and complexity. However, it is brilliantly experimental televsion in itself.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Popularity: 18% [?]

This blog writer thought she yielded to no one in her admiration for The Wire. But I have found a post on the onetoein blog that is well more enthusiastic than anything I’ve said.

To say The Wire is the best show on television doesn’t do it justice. It narrows the playing field, especially for those who see television as a ghetto. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to call The Wire one of the best and most important pieces of American art of the early 21^st Century, and even that narrows it down.

I have to agree except I think it’s probably the major work of art that’s ever been presented on television.

In the year’s gap before the next series appears, I have found a potential substitute in the HBO mini-series that gave birth to The Wire. It’s called The Corner and is a set of 6 hour-long programmes, each based on a separate story. It won lots of awards and made it possible for the Wire to be created. I’ve only just glanced at the intro episode - in preparation of aserious 6 hour session) but it looks a lot like The Wire, though obviously it was made on a much lower budget .

So far it loooks promising. Even the first few minutes are shaping up as pretty funny and shrewd (once you get past the double set of serious intro talks - one is from a man who grew up on the corners and another is a mock interview with the man whose story provides the first episode.)

Buy The Corner dvd from Amazon

Popularity: 14% [?]

Popularity: 14% [?]