Washington Black, Disney+
Based on Esi Edugyan’s Giller Prize-winning picaresque of the same name, Washington Black follows a young boy’s globe-trotting 19th century adventures after escaping slavery on a Barbados sugar plantation.Cristian Salvatierra/Disney +
Canadian author Esi Edugyan’s Giller Prize-winning picaresque about a young boy who escapes slavery on a Barbados sugar plantation in a fantastical manner and ends up on a series of globe-trotting 19th-century adventures has received an eight-part adaptation on Disney+.
It’s not overly by the book: The TV version begins in Halifax with the grown-up Washington Black (Ernest Kingsley Jr.) falling in love and evading a bounty hunter. Though the miniseries is initially inelegant in the way its flashes back and forth to the tale of the younger Wash (Eddie Katanga), the timeline shifts find their rhythm by the second episode – and liberties taken with the plot and dramatis personae start to pay off. There are fine supporting performances from executive producer Sterling K. Brown, Miles Yekinni and Tom Ellis – and enjoyable tips of the hat to the works of Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson and Lucy Maud Montgomery. Told with more a young-adult-leaning sensibility than the novel, it should be a solid family watch with teens (rated 14 and up).
American Fiction, Crave
Writer-director Cord Jefferson’s feature debut, American Fiction, follows struggling author named Thelonious Ellison (Jeffrey Wright, pictured) who accidentally pens a runaway bestseller.Claire Folger/The Associated Press
In a recent interview with The New York Times about the televisual tone shift evident in Washington Black, Sterling K. Brown talked about having acted in the 2023 film adaptation of another novel, Erasure by Percival Everett. He said American Fiction, which coincidentally lands on Crave July 25, “highlights that Black pain and trauma seem to be the only stories that are fit for mainstream consumption and dilute the totality of who we are.”
Writer-director Cord Jefferson’s feature debut is about an English professor and struggling author named Thelonious (Monk) Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) who, in a pique, writes an over-the-top satire of stereotypical Black American books – and ends up accidentally penning a runaway bestseller. The comedy won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival before being nominated for five Academy Awards including one for Brown’s supporting performance as Ellison’s brother.
Smothered: The Censorship Struggles of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Internet Archive
Documentary Smothered: The Censorship Struggles of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour explores how the duo battled network censors for their satirical humour.Internet archive/Supplied
In the wake of CBS’s cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, despite leading its peers in ratings, it’s worth looking back at the history of that network and comedy censorship – and, in general, remembering what jokes didn’t fly on American television until the late 1960s.
This 2002 documentary explores how the Smothers Brothers were given a difficult Sunday night slot opposite Bonanza in 1967 – and, though their variety show started to beat the long-running western in viewership, they were already battling the network censors in Program Practices for their satirical humour by Episode 9. (Ironically, the first of their skits to get kiboshed was one with Elaine May about network censorship.)
The clean-cut comedians (“Mom always liked you best!”) embraced countercultural musicians and brought a critical edge to its sketches about the Vietnam War – eventually leading to their cancellation. Show writers and regulars such as Steve Martin, Rob Reiner and Leigh French are among the talking heads in this straightforward doc directed by Maureen Muldaur that originally aired on Bravo – and which you can find in Canada right now streaming for free on archive.org by searching for the full title.
Smothered, StackTV
Starring Danielle Vitalis and Jon Pointing, Smothered is a not so typical rom-com.Sky UK LTD/Supplied
Same title, different show: This is an enjoyable 2023 British Sky Comedy series created by the London-based Canadian writer Monica Heisey. It begins as a pretty typical contemporary raunchy rom-com. Sammy (Danielle Vitalis), who viewers first meet at a sex party, and Tom (Jon Pointing), a more by-the-book corporate type, encounter each other at a karaoke bar and make a pact to have a completely meaningless three-week affair. But it evolves into something less done – exploring dating as a single parent and the perils and pleasures of step-parenthood.
Heisey also wrote on Lena Dunham’s new London-set rom-com on Netflix, Too Much – which has, it must be said, much better chemistry between its leads, but watching Smothered will give viewers an idea of what she brought to the writer’s room, including a Canadian sensibility than manifests in jokes about Celine Dion and a couple of our notorious serial killers.
Mary Kills People, CBC Gem
The 2017 drama stars Caroline Dhavernas as an ER doctor and purveyor of assisted death.CBC Gem/Supplied
While many of us are attempting to go #ElbowsUp and buy Canadian, the national public broadcaster continues to spend a fair bit of your money to buy American television programs and put them on Gem, its English-language “free” (with ads) streaming service. Recent additions include Showtime’s The Affair and HBO’s Fleishman Is in Trouble. Better that CBC curate Gem to be about the best of ambitious Canadian TV past and present: This month, it acquired the first season of Global’s Mary Kills People.
Originally broadcast in 2017, the drama stars Caroline Dhavernas as an ER doctor and single mom who moonlights as a purveyor of assisted death and is in it for both idealistic reasons and the money. This is from the days before MAID, so Canadian TV’s favourite Kiwi, Jay Ryan (North of North), plays a cop trying to nail the death doula. Laws may have changed – but this show that The Globe and Mail’s John Doyle called “remarkably assured, droll and adult” still has life in her.