Issa Rae, known for her work on "Insecure," is an executive producer (and key figure) in the new two-part documentary, "Seen & Heard: The History of Black Television," premiering Tuesday on HBO and streaming on HBO Max. Presented as a film by Giselle Bailey, with directing credits shared with Phil Bertelsen, it doesn't offer a comprehensive account: any viewer who has watched much television over the medium's decades-long history might have an opinion on what's missing. But what's on offer here is always interesting, elegantly produced, sometimes thrilling, often poignant.
Young viewers, whose historical and cultural interests may not extend beyond their own births, may be surprised, but even those of us who remember a time before "Julia" can learn a thing or two.
Stars: Tyler Perry, Issa Rae, Debbie Allen
The first episode, "Seen," begins with Tracee Ellis Ross and Anthony Anderson in the green room waiting to appear on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" To celebrate the end of "black-ish," after eight seasons—a series created and directed by Black people on a major network—before returning to the white-written "Amos & Andy" and a hesitant march toward a better future. While the essence of the combined episodes is more than hopeful—the second episode, "Heard," is a story of success—it's also one of struggle. And in an era when powerful forces want to erase struggle from history, it's good to remember, or learn, that there was a time, in the memories of the people you'll meet here, when Black people barely existed on television, either in front of or behind the camera.
"Heard" is essentially a series of profiles in which important industry figures tell their stories. "American Fiction" director Cord Jefferson, who left journalism to write for television ("The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore," "The Good Place," an Emmy for "Watchmen"), talks about generational trauma and talks to his father over Zoom about his anger issues (both seem fine); Directors Deondray and Quincy LeNear Gossfield (working on Lena Waithe's "The Chi") visit Quincy's family in a Chicago suburb and talk about coming out after keeping their relationship a secret for years. Tyler Perry gets emotional with Oprah, reminiscing about old times, and shows the filmmakers his studio complex in Atlanta, complete with studios named after Black stars, including Oprah (the first location, of course), Denzel Washington, Cicely Tyson, Whoopi Goldberg, Ruby Dee, and Ossie Davis. Oprah herself recounts her journey from rural poverty to "bad" TV news reporter and then talk show host. (She didn't plan to become a media mogul, but she is Oprah, after all.)
Bailey handles the inevitable question about Bill Cosby with aplomb, covering his fall from grace following sexual assault allegations with a couple of voiceover headlines, without understating the importance of "The Cosby Show" (Rae: "Sometimes I thought my mom watched Claire Huxtable to learn how to be a mother") or the beneficial effect it had on NBC's flagging fortunes. (It's touching to see the late Malcolm Jamal-Warner, who still calls his former boss "Mr. Cosby," so alive here.)
The series is discursive and selective, as it could be, given the magnitude of the subject; it focuses less on specific shows, most of which are superficially addressed, than on the cultural waves and cycles of abundance and scarcity of Black television. Donald Glover appears briefly in a scene from Rae's web series, "The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl," which spawned "Insecure," but his own "Atlanta," one of the best TV series of the century, goes unmentioned. Tamera Mowry-Housley, co-star of "Sister Sister," recalls Tim Reid, who played her father on the show, telling her how new networks used Black shows to build audience loyalty and then abandoned them in favor of white shows; but no one would know, unless they already knew, that Reid co-produced and starred in one of television's great lost series, CBS's "Frank's Place," set in New Orleans, or co-created the Showtime series "Linc's," set in a Washington, D.C., bar.
Yet the fact that some of the most interesting, if not the most successful, Black series of the modern era have fallen outside the mainstream or resist easy categorization—"The Vince Staples Show," "Black Jesus," "The Boondocks," "I'm a Virgo"—none of which fit this narrative, speaks in some ways to the richness of the subject. I was, however, pleased to see Terence Nance, whose great surreal-operatic HBO series, “Random Acts of Flyness,” can only be described at length. “
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