‘Perimeter’: 1990s Atlanta Is the Backdrop for New BET+ Drama (Exclusive Trailer)

A new drama is coming to BET+ this winter from director Armani Ortiz (Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story).

Perimeter, set in Atlanta in the 1990s (see the trailer, below), stars Tatyana Ali alongside newcomer Ava Mone’t and Donovan Christie Jr. The series centers around the Dawn family, daughter Paige (Mone’t), a sophomore at Spelman college whose life gets off track when she falls for a bad boy type; her father, Councilman Robert Dawn (Christie), whose political ambitions on his quest to become mayor come at a grave personal and moral cost; and his wife, Connie (Ali), who tries to keep the family together. Their personal drama takes place against the larger backdrop of two of Atlanta’s biggest cultural events at the time: Freaknik and the 1996 Summer Olympics.

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“Exploring Atlanta in the early ’90s is like finding a cave full of diamonds,” Ortiz tells The Hollywood Reporter. “To be able to tell this city’s amazing story through the eyes of a young cast that grows up alongside it was even more fateful. As Atlanta developed its persona — preparing to take the world stage with the Olympic Games while simultaneously coming of age as America’s Black Mecca with its rich character of natives, HBCU culture, Black governance — the history of Atlanta is undeniably one of a kind.”

Tyler Perry is an executive pProducer of Perimeter, along with Ortiz, who also wrote the series. Asante White and Deance Wyatt are also producers. Additional castmembers include Malcolm Xavier, Jalen Gilbert, Wes Montez, Jordan Coleman, Sharon Conley, Evan Gamble and Shawn Vaughn.

BET+ will roll out the series in a unique format, debuting the first four episodes of season one on Feb. 29.

“When pitching the show, we knew that a single pilot episode wouldn’t be worthy of the story we are trying to tell,” explains Ortiz. “With the help of Tyler Perry and BET, we committed to doing the first four episodes of the series to give people a taste of what to truly expect with Perimeter season one.”

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