Why is it that almost every show on TV that features a black cast or is aimed at a black audience is crappy?
Either it's a sacchrine sweet copy of crappy white family oriented shows like "Family Matters" or The Cosby Show , or it's just plain awful. Martin , One on One , The jamie foxx show, the steve harvey show... WRETCHED! Does anybody recall Hangin' with Mr Cooper ? Or how about Homeboys In Space ?
But... I have to say there have been some great shows. I used to really like A Different World until it got weird and the guy with flip-up glasses married Whitley and he was a teacher and the guy who looked half-white was still on the show and ... well, you get the picture.
One of the best shows on in my opinion right now in this category is The Bernie Mac Show . Bernie Mac is very funny and his show really seems to be presenting a black family in present day America without trying to be "white" and also without stooping to stereotypes, which is always tired and just plain stupid.
I think that is what sank D.L. Hughley's show. He is very funny but the show too often relyed on the tired gag of the white people in the neighborhood not "getting" the black family. I'm sure that this might be true for some situations but come on this is the 21st century. There really are white people who could give less of a shit about inter-racial marriage and black people moving into the neighborhood.
You know what used to be funny despite utilizing stereotypes so much, or maybe even because of it? In Living Color . Unfortunately that show sank when the Wayans completely took over and I guess there were no checks and balances to help weed the funny skits from the unfunny skits.
Another great show was Living Single . Queen Latifah was really good in that and I'm so glad they went back and gave the cast a chance to do final episode because at first they just cancelled it outright.
I'm on the fence about Fresh prince of bel-air . I personally didn't think it was that funny but I know a lot of people who used to love it, plus it had a very catchy theme song.
Anyway, from what I hear, UPN is mostly all black programming but I don't get any of those shows, so if there any good ones on there, I don't know.
I don't really know what prompted me to write this other than I know it's bad enough having so many awful shows with white casts I can't even imagine how it is for a minority group to be constantly stuck with shows that suck.
Don't even get me started on the sorry excuses for latino sit-coms I have seen. Two. Both bad.
Somebody write NBC.