HBO's The Wire Couldn't Have Happened Without This Forgotten Miniseries

There is no TV show quite like HBO's "The Wire." Co-creators David Simon and Ed Burns drew on their respective backgrounds as a newspaper reporter and a homicide detective to bring the city of Baltimore to cable TV, warts and all. Across the show's five seasons, "The Wire" managed to turn what could have been an elevated take on a cop show into a deeply felt and nuanced tableau of life in America, where the War on Drugs has turned our streets into a war zone.

Building off their success with the dark NBC procedural "Homicide: Life on the Streets," the series strived to blur the line between real life and "The Wire." They went so far as to create characters like Avon Barksdale, who were inspired by real criminals running the Baltimore drug trade, and then cast their real-world counterparts in the show. Then there's Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, who went from an extra to a full-on star with a character who brought unvarnished authenticity to a series already dripping with it.

Many fans now binge-watch the show, devouring seasons at a time (which according to David Simon, is the best way to watch it), and are still left wanting more. What they don't know is that the forgotten miniseries "The Corner" laid the groundwork for "The Wire" to take root.

Before Simon and Burns set their sights on all of Baltimore, their HBO miniseries "The Corner" adapted their nonfiction book "The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood" for HBO. Across the series' six episodes, audiences watched 15-year-old DeAndre "Black" McCullough (Sean Nelson) navigate life as a drug dealer on a corner in West Baltimore while his mother Denise Francine Boyd (Khandi Alexander) and father Gary (T.K. Carter) struggled with their own drug addictions.

Unlike their picaresque take on "The Wire," "The Corner" focuses on this family as a microcosm of the larger problems plaguing the city of Baltimore. To bring their true story to life, Simon reunited with many of his "Homicide" stars, and fans of "The Wire" will notice many familiar Baltimore faces living on this particular corner, albeit with very different roles.

Actors like Lance Reddick, Delaney Williams, Reg E. Cathey, and Robert F. Chew are all cornerstones of "The Wire," and in "The Corner," they got to stretch their wings in small parts throughout the miniseries in roles that stood in contrast to the parts they'd inhabit in the larger series. The most stark difference between the two parts is found with Clarke Peters, who in "The Wire" plays the noble detective Lester Freamon, but here in "The Corner" plays an addict by the name Fat Curt.

These actors provide a sense of continuity between "The Corner" and "The Wire," with their contrasting roles serving as a reminder of just how easy it is for ordinary people to fall into the vicious cycle of poverty. While it hasn't become as revered as its spiritual successor, we might never have gotten addicted to "The Wire" if HBO didn't give us a taste with "The Corner."