What was the problem?
‘Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas’ tackled police reform comically, but was ahead of its time
In the debut season of his topical HBO comedy series, Wyatt Cenac resolved to tackle the challenging issue of police reform in America. The show, “Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas,” drew on its host’s experience as a former correspondent for “The Daily Show,” allowing him to meet with activists, law enforcement officials and elected leaders across the country. Using a mixture of journalism and comedy, Cenac sought to educate viewers on subjects like community policing, consent decrees, defunding and abolition.
If it were airing on HBO now, when the killings of Black Americans have led to protests and the strongest demands for police reform in a generation, “Problem Areas” would be an especially timely series. But that prescient season was broadcast two years ago, and the program was canceled in 2019.
Looking back on “Problem Areas” now, Cenac remains immensely proud of the show. “It felt like our opportunity to talk about this thing that no one else in late-night was dealing with, that’s not making its way into the dialogue,” he said in a recent interview.
But having seen police reform become a central issue of American life as the country confronts institutionalized racism and audiences hasten to inform themselves on the subject, Cenac is trying to understand why his efforts to highlight it did not gain much traction at the time.
“It is very bizarre to think that when we did it, people just weren’t ready to hear about it or think about it,” he said.
What happened to “Problem Areas” was the result of several factors: choices made by its host and HBO but also the inherent difficulties of its subject matter and the systemic challenges faced by Black performers in late-night TV.
Cenac, 44, a comedian with a low-key, easygoing stage presence, introduced “Problem Areas” in April 2018. One of his goals was to differentiate the series from other late-night competitors by focusing on a single season-long narrative across 10 episodes.
The overall issue was vast, but Cenac hoped to bring it into focus through specific issues of reform in each city he visited.
“You could tell a full story about policing but also be able to see chapters of it by going to different places,” he said.
These preliminary decisions led to some obstacles, though not necessarily insurmountable ones. The journalistic nature of the show made it difficult to know what story “Problem Areas” would tell until Cenac completed his field reporting.
Timothy Greenberg, a fellow “Daily Show” alumnus who worked as an executive producer on “Problem Areas,” said the need for people who would speak on camera also proved limiting.
“You have to book police who are willing to go on television and talk about the difficulties in policing,” Greenberg said. “That’s hard to do. It’s borderline impossible.”
Perhaps the most significant question facing “Problem Areas” was one of tone and how it would create comedy from this raw material. “With something as serious as policing, how do you find the humor in it?” said Ezra Edelman, a documentary filmmaker who was also an executive producer of “Problem Areas.” “Where do you inject levity with characters that are talking about deadserious topics?”
Although “Problem Areas” opened each episode with shorter, in-studio segments where Cenac could be loose and lighthearted, his field pieces presented him as a more open-minded interviewer who was not necessarily striving for punchlines.
That approach drew some preliminary acclaim. In a review for Vulture, critic Matt Zoller Seitz wrote that an early segment on police training was “powerful, well-researched and as sensitively handled as can be,” adding that Cenac was “a major talent, and there’s no reason to think this program won’t get stronger as it goes along.”
Instead, around 300,000 viewers watched the first episode, and the show rarely improved on those numbers.
“I remember being frustrated that it did not get more pickup and more attention at the time,” said John Oliver, host of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” and an executive producer of “Problem Areas.”
“I thought, well, OK, maybe people will find it,” Oliver said.
But audiences did not seek out the series in sizable numbers, either. HBO renewed “Problem Areas” for a second season in which it focused on education reform, after which the show was canceled.
Nina Rosenstein, an executive vice president of HBO programming, said that “Problem Areas” was the show that the network had hoped for, but the program did not build on its lead-in show, “Real Time With Bill Maher.”
“Contentwise, we were so happy with it,” she said. “It was scheduled in a perfect place. We supported it on air and with marketing. It was teed up for success.”
Cenac said that going into “Problem Areas,” he was aware that late-night shows hosted by Black men tended to have brief life spans, pointing to past programs like “D.L. Hughley Breaks the News,” “The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore” and “Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell” — none of which lasted more than two seasons. (There are also prominent exceptions, like Trevor Noah’s tenure on “The Daily Show.”)
“Whatever that thing is, that thing is real,” Cenac said. “There was a pattern that existed. You’ve got two and done, and I am part of that club.”
Oliver agreed that there was “certainly something there” to Cenac’s point about the late-night environment.
Pointing to the praise that “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” has received for its own recent coverage of police reform, Oliver said, “The fact that that got a bunch of attention, coming from a white man, I do think is a pretty sad way to almost embody the problems that exist rather than showing any way to solve them.”
Although “Last Week Tonight” has addressed policing in past episodes, Oliver said that he would not have been able to make his most recent segment without the “infrastructure of understanding” that Cenac’s series provided.
Cenac said he had grown used to seeing the topics he covered on “Problem Areas” resurface in the news and on other TV shows. “You throw your hands up,” he said. “Well, I guess this is the way of the world.”