'CORNER' PUTS A FACE ON FACELESS TRAGEDY.

Byline: David Kronke Television Critic

Gary McCullough almost got out. The guy had himself a couple of lucrative jobs, a Mercedes and a sweet science for picking winning stocks. The only thing separating him from a happily-ever-after was the ubiquitous, ineradicable drug culture of the West Baltimore neighborhood of his childhood, the place even his parents resolutely refused to leave for their own reasons.

Gary looked at a place in the suburbs, far from the acres of cracked concrete and the too-accessible dope vials his wife Fran was increasingly fond of. The house was a done deal until Fran, to whom Gary couldn't say no, wondered what there was for her out there in white-bread land.

What happened next is the focus of HBO's indelible docudrama ``The Corner,'' artfully adapted from the powerfully sobering book by David Simon (whose earlier book, ``Homicide: A Year on the Streets,'' inspired the acclaimed NBC TV series) and former Baltimore cop Edward Burns. As written by Simon and David Mills and directed by Charles S. Dutton, the six-hour miniseries is equal parts languorous, day-in-the-life stroll through the often whimsical survival tactics of beleaguered, addled addicts and a visceral social commentary on the simple fact that the drug war cannot be won until the government puts a human face on the inner-city victims of this back-door holocaust.

Cops and dealers appear mainly in the background here; the focus is squarely on the lost souls who, by dint of their birth in a neighborhood consigned to malignant neglect by the government, had little choice but to succumb, one way or another, to the pervasive local drug culture. There isn't a lot of physical violence - the only shootout is a comedy of errors in which some gangsta wanna-bes have no idea what they're shooting or where to aim - but the psychological toll is devastating.

``The Corner'' focuses on a dissolute family, Gary McCullough (an empathetic and understated but no less star-making turn by T.K. Carter), his ex-wife Fran (Khandi Alexander, also excellent) and his semi-estranged teen-age son DeAndre (Sean Nelson). Fran somehow wore Gary down to the point where he's as bad or worse a user as she, and they go about their daily business of raising just enough money to buy a $10 blast from one of Fayette Street's open-air drug emporiums. (Baltimore alone has 50,000 drug users.)

Gary's capers, as he calls them, tend to be petty larcenies - stealing the copper piping out of a home to sell at a local scrap factory, for example. Truth is, he's a little too nice for the streets, routinely getting played for a fool by the more serious junkies around him - particularly his dangerously unhinged girlfriend Ronnie (an eye-popping, blazing performance by Tasha Smith) - and his schemes often backfire. DeAndre, for his part, is a chronic truant case at school and flirts seriously with the easy cash-money world of small-time dealing.

Struggling, heroically yet vainly, to restore sanity to this anarchy is Ella Thompson (Tyra Ferrell), who pours her own anguish over the loss of her daughter into running the local rec center, the neighborhood's lone oasis from the enveloping suffering for children. Long-time beat officer Bob Brown (Brian O'Neill), who knew the users of today when they were still rec-center kids, continues to prowl the streets, engaging in the occasional meaningless bust.

Dutton bookends each episode with interview sequences: At the beginning of each show, he pointedly questions one of the story's principles, who cooperate until he asks too prickly a personal question about their use; at the end, he speaks with peripheral characters who offer a broader context for the story. He asks Bob Brown if the war on drugs can be won; after a painfully awkward pause, Brown merely shrugs, ``No comment.'' This helps contribute to the series' stunning verisimilitude; it feels more like a documentary than any TV series you've ever seen.

Each episode piles on the telling, heartbreaking details: DeAndre's sincere but oft-thwarted efforts to look for a job in the unyielding straight world and the fleeting moment of pride when he takes part in a speech contest; Gary watching admiringly as DeAndre makes love to his underage girlfriend while he's stealing the dope DeAndre's peddling; how a series of characters escalates the cost of an abortion in an effort to scam money from one another; junkies running to score a hit of the dope that fells one of their numbers, figuring it must pack a pretty good punch.

``The Corner'' depicts the schizophrenic dichotomy of the user's mentality - skeptical and envious of those who go through rehab, yet protective in maintaining the neighborhood children's innocence.

The cumulative effect can be overwhelming - note that there are a few very graphic scenes of needle use and its ghastly ravages of addicts' veins. That makes the rare grace moments - Fran struggles to go clean, as does acharacter who goes by the moniker of Blue - all the more cathartic and dramatic.

But ``The Corner'' isn't about offering synthetic redemption; it's a stern reminder that no one here gets out alive. In a rare moment of lucidity, Gary takes in the movie ``Schindler's List,'' which chills him to the bone. ``Once they said, 'You ain't human,' it made it easier to kill,'' he observes of the Nazis. Though his mind is fuzzy, he still sees a compelling parallel on Fayette Street: The government has allowed, directly or indirectly, drugs to flourish there; now, Gary says, ``The world's leavin' it to us to finish it.''

Coming pointedly in an election year, ``The Corner'' is an eloquent plea to our society to strip away the drug-war rhetoric and consider the men and women, boys and girls caught in the crossfire of political grandstanding and monolithic disinterest. It's not easy to watch, but once you start, it's impossible to turn away.

THE FACTS

--The show: ``The Corner.''

--What: Miniseries docudrama examining the human toll of Baltimore's drug culture.

--The stars: T.K. Carter, Khandi Alexander, Sean Nelson.

--Where: HBO.

--When: 10 p.m. Sundays through May 21; repeated Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays (check listings).

--Our rating: Four stars

CAPTION(S):

photo, box

Photo: Sean Nelson, left, and Khandi Alexander as his mother are struggling to get past poverty and addiction in HBO's ``The Corner.''

Box: THE FACTS (see text)