Good morning.

(Want to get California Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.)

Hollywood depictions of the drug trade have commonly focused on the East Coast — think “Scarface” in Miami or “The Wire” in Baltimore.

Now comes a television drama created by John Singleton, best known for “Boyz N the Hood,” that explores crack cocaine’s infiltration of South Central Los Angeles in the 1980s.

His show, “Snowfall,” had its series premiere last week on FX and airs Wednesday nights.

We caught up with Mr. Singleton, 49, who grew up in South Central, by phone. Some excerpts:

Q. What was South Central like before crack hit?

A. No bars on the windows. Not a lot of people fenced in their homes. A lot more kids played in the street. You could go to different neighborhoods, make friends in different neighborhoods. Then once this went down, it was just totally different. It wasn’t about going into Watts and hanging out with some friends because, you know, they were in business. It became about business.