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The Corner: A Year In The Life Of An Inner City Neighbourhood

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The Wire: Truth Be Told

The complete HBO official series guide. Introduction by David Simon.

Welcome to the critically acclaimed HBO drama series The Wire, hailed as ‘the best show on television, period’ by the San Francisco Chronicle. The New York Times calls it ‘a vital part of the television landscape…unvarnished realism.’ Time declares that The Wire, ‘like its underfunded, workaday cops, just plugged away until it outshone everything else on TV.’

The Wire stands not only as riveting drama but also as a sociopolitical treatise with ambitions beyond any television serial. It portrays the war of attrition between Baltimore’s hardened police force and its drug dealers, and the blurring of good and evil, justice and injustice, right and wrong.

Rafael Alvarez—a reporter, essayist, and staff writer for the show—brings the reader inside, detailing many of the real-life incidents and personalities that have inspired the show’s storylines and characters, providing the reader with insights into the city of Baltimore—itself an undeniable character in the series. Packed with photographs and featuring an introduction by series creator and executive producer David Simon, as well as essays by acclaimed authors George Pelecanos, Laura Lippman, and Anthony Walton, here is an invaluable resource for both fans of the show and viewers who have yet to discover The Wire.

The Wire: Season 1

From David Simon, creator and co-writer of HBO's triple Emmy-winning mini-series The Corner, this unvarnished, highly realistic HBO series follows a single sprawling drug and murder investigation in Baltimore. Told from the point of view of both the police and their targets, the series captures a universe of subterfuge and surveillance, where easy distinctions between good and evil, and crime and punishment, are challenged at every turn.

The Wire: Season 2

The most unvarnished, uncompromising and realistic police drama ever returns for another hard-hitting season. McNutty has been demoted to harbour patrol. Daniels is in the police-archive dungon, Prez is chafing in the suburbs, and Greggs is stuck behind a desk. Meanwhile, on the docks of Baltimore harbour, the rank and fire scrounge for work and the union bosses take illegitimate measures to reinvigorate business, but a horrific discovery is about to blow the whole port inside out. While the detail is on ice, a new case begins.

The Wire: Season 3

Everyone is feeling the heat in Baltimore. The drug war is a losing campaign, bodies are piling up in the street and a desperate mayor demands to see some victories before Election Day. But the police are running out of ammunition. Wiretaps aren't working, and neither are stakeouts or street busts. No matter how hard McNulty and the detail try, the dealers always seem to be a step ahead.

The Wire: Season 4

With the fall of the Barksdale empire, and the ascent of a new young drug king in Baltimore, McNulty, Bunk and the rest of the detail continue to "follow the money" up the political ladder amidst a hotly contested mayoral campaign. Prez witnesses first-hand the role of inner-city education in the formation of youth as four students, Michael, Namond, Randy and Dukie, face dangerous decisions and adolescent angst in a city rife with the temptations of crime and easy money. The explosive fourth season of The Wire continues to blur the lines between good and evil, and incite the fires of urban unrest.

The Wire: Season 5

In a city that can no longer even recognise its problems, much less begin to solve them, police detectives attempt to bring in one last, worthy case against a violent crew of narcotics traffickers. And when bureaucratic poverty and infighting threatens that case, one detective will risk everything, creating a fraud that will eventually entangle the city's newspaper, which is weakened by declines in circulation and advertising. With journalism itself so vulnerable and desperate, an unscrupulous, ambitious reporter will ride the story wherever it goes - or wherever he wants it to go.

From the streets to the port to the schools and the halls of government, The Wire has chronicled the tribulations of a post-industrial American city. Now, in its final season, the drama directs its last question to the media and its consumers: If anything in The Wire's depiction of urban America was genuine or important, then what is it, exactly, that occupies our attentions? What are the stories we embrace? And what are the stories we ignore? And why?

The Wire: The Complete Collection

5 Seasons over 24 Discs constituing of the greatest work of drama on television.

Candid and intense, The Wire has been hailed as one of the great achievements in television artistry by the San Francisco Chronicle. Viewed from the perspective of the principal characters the police and their targets The Wire captures a world where easy distinctions between good and evil and crime and punishment are challenged at every turn.

The series first season concentrated on the often-futile efforts of police to infiltrate a West Baltimore drug ring. Seasons two and three introduced new story lines as the drug investigation escalated, adding the pressures on the working class and the citys political leadership to the citys mounting problems. Season four explored the public school system against the backdrop of a new drug empire and mayor, while the fifth and final season centred on the medias role in addressing or failing to address what was really going on in the city.

The Wire: Season 5

In the projects. On the docks. In City Hall. In the schools. And now, in the media. The places and faces have changed, but the game remains the same. Times are tough for the detail. Mayor Carcetti has slashed the departments budget to the bone. Police are operating without overtime some without cars and radios. Angered, McNulty is off the rails again and headed down a dangerous path of deception and lies that will ally him with an unscrupulous reporter. The drug trade still rules the corners, all you have to do is read between the lines.

Episode Listing:

More With Less
Unconfirmed Reports
Not For Attribution
Transitions
React Quotes
The Dickensian Aspect
Took
Clarifications
Late Editions
-30-

Special Features:

“The Wire: The Last Word” A documentary exploring the role of the media.
“The Wire: Odyssey” A retrospective of the First Four Seasons
Six Audio Commentaries with Creator David Simon, cast and crew.

The Wire: The Complete Seasons 1-4

The first four seasons are now available for $99.95 only at Readings and while stock lasts.

Season One

From David Simon, creator and co-writer of HBO's triple Emmy-winning mini-series The Corner, this unvarnished, highly realistic HBO series follows a single sprawling drug and murder investigation in Baltimore. Told from the point of view of both the police and their targets, the series captures a universe of subterfuge and surveillance, where easy distinctions between good and evil, and crime and punishment, are challenged at every turn.

Season 2

The Most unvarnished, uncompromising and realistic police drama ever returns for another hard-hitting season. McNutty has been demoted to harbour patrol. Daniels is in the police-archive dungon, Prez is chafing in the suburbs, and Greggs is stuck behind a desk. Meanwhile, on the docks of Baltimore harbour, the rank and fire scrounge for work and the union bosses take illegitimate measures to reinvigorate business, but a horrific discovery is about to blow the whole port inside out. While the detail is on ice, a new case begins.

Season 3

The heat is on in Baltimore. The drug war is being lost, bodies are piling up, and a desperate mayor wants the tide turned before the election. But the police department hasn't got any answers. With the demolition of the Franklin Terrace towers, Stringer Bell and the Barksdale crew have been forced to improvise. But no matter how hard McNulty and the detail try, the dealers always seem to be one step ahead of the game.

Season 4

With the fall of Barksdale and the ascent of young Marlo Stanfield as West Baltimore's drug king the detail continues to "follow the money" up the political ladder in the midst of a mayoral election that pits the black incumbent Clarence Royce against an ambitious white councilman Tommy Carcetti. The theme of urban education is explored through four new characters - Michael Lee, Namond Brice, Randy Wagstaff and "Dukie" Weems - as they traverse adolescence in the stunted drug-saturated streets of West Baltimore. The world that awaits these boys and the American commitment to equal opportunity are depicted brilliantly in the edgy all too realistic Season 4 of The Wire.

The Wire: The Truth Be Told

THE WIRE has been widely hailed as the greatest television series of all time. It portrays the war of attrition between Baltimore's hardened police force and its drug dealers, and the blurring of good and evil, justice and injustice, right and wrong. The Wire: Truth Be Told takes the reader inside the world of THE WIRE, detailing many of the real-life incidents and personalities that have inspired the show's storylines and characters. Packed with photographs and featuring an introduction by series creator and executive producer David Simon, as well as essays by acclaimed authors George Pelecanos, Ed Burns, Richard Price, Laura Lipmann, Denis Lehane, it covers all five series in glorious detail.

Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets

The scene is Baltimore. Twice every three days another citizen is shot, stabbed or bludgeoned to death. At the centre of this hurricane of crime is the city's homicide unit, a small brotherhood of hard men who fight for whatever justice is possible in a deadly world.

The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner City Neighbourhood

A devastating portrait of the American drugs war, from the creators of the award-winning series The Wire.

The crime-infested intersection of West Fayette and Monroe Streets is well-known—and cautiously avoided—by most of Baltimore. But this notorious corner’s 24-hour open-air drug market provides the economic fuel for a dying neighborhood. David Simon, an award-winning author and crime reporter, and Edward Burns, a 20-year veteran of the urban drug war, tell the chilling story of this desolate crossroad.

Through the eyes of one broken family—two drug-addicted adults and their smart, vulnerable 15-year-old son, DeAndre McCollough—Simon and Burns examine the sinister realities of inner cities across the country and unflinchingly assess why law enforcement policies, moral crusades, and the welfare system have accomplished so little. This extraordinary book is a crucial look at the price of the drug culture and the poignant scenes of hope, caring, and love that astonishingly rise in the midst of a place America has abandoned.

Praise for The Corner:

‘A dense, mind-blowing 600-page doorstop…less a book, more a way of life…The characters in this story are real without trying…you’ll find yourself struck by the sheer poetry of the prose’
— The Times

'Brave, unblinkered, and heartbreaking.'
— New York Times Book Review

'A towering achievement. By narrowing their focus to a single American inner-city neighbourhood, Simon and Burns end up telling something broader in scope, even epic. These singular stories of tragedy and triumph, love and despair tell us more about what's plaguing big cities than a thousand studies. The Corner should be required reading for every public official in America—and beyond. The rest of us will simply read The Corner because it is more touching, mesmerising, maddening, heartbreaking and, ultimately, profound than anything we're likely to encounter in fiction.'
— Linwood Barclay, author of NO TIME FOR GOODBYE

‘The Corner matters, the way its predecessor, Homicide: Life on the Killing Streets mattered…They matter because they’re both examples of the kind of in-depth social reportage that is, in both Britain and the States, crawling into its death-bed…David Simon and Ed Burns are ideal chroniclers: humane, passionate, wise…Read The Corner, if for no other reason than to find out the heartbreaking human dramas we are missing.'
— Scotsman