Sketch comedy still vital, worthy platform for ideas

Sketch shows are the stealth bombers of television. Compared with the dramas and sitcoms that dominate the conversation in modern television, they can seem ephemeral (“Saturday Night Live” notwithstanding).

Yet this perceived lack of importance makes them an excellent vehicle for distinctive, even oddball, points of view.

Sketch comedy can be abstract, absurd or shot through with topical urgency. Freed from the demands of narrative and character development, sketch comedy tends to be more intellectual than emotional. It’s perfect for parody, satire, social commentary or examining the small quirks of human nature.

With all that in its favor, sketch comedy still can seem to be a secondary form, but its lineage is venerable, and the line is far from played out. Two series with African American creators and casts, HBO’S “A Black Lady Sketch Show” and IFC’S “Sherman’s Showcase,” debuted recently.

“Black Lady” was created by and stars Robin Thede, who was the head writer on Larry Wilmore’s “The Nightly Show” and had her own currentevents comedy on BET. She is joined here, in an exceedingly nimble main cast, by Quinta Brunson, Gabrielle Dennis (“The Game”) and Ashley Nicole Black (“Full Frontal With Samantha Bee”).

All sorts of ideas, big and little, spin about in “A Black Lady Sketch Show,” but there is a tendency for ordinary things to quickly become extraordinary. A groom (Thede) can say anything but “I do;” language itself breaks down. The camera will pull back at the end of a sketch, turning an orgy of drug-addled violence into a politician’s campaign ad.

More modest, but with plenty of sideways charm, is “Sherman’s Showcase,” from “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” writers Diallo Riddle and Bashir Salahuddin. The series presents itself as a series of infomercials flogging a “partially complete 23-DVD boxed set” culled from a longrunning dance show in the mold of “Soul Train.” A collection of mutually enhancing bits gathered under a fictional umbrella, it has a wisp of nonchronological narrative surrounding its recurring characters, host Sherman Mcdaniels (Salahuddin) and his not-wholly-simpatico producer, Dutch Shepherd (Riddle).

When it comes to “A Black Lady Sketch Show,” I am not, demographically speaking, going to be able to nod at every joke and say, “That’s so true” — just as I am not the person in the comedy club to whom the line “You ladies know what I’m talking about” is addressed.

Who you are and what you know and where you’ve been affect how you hear a joke, and no good joke ever owes you an explanation. But I am a human being, watching human beings, and I’m interested in what the ladies know, and what they’re talking about. (Given how it prizes point of view, no medium is more educational than comedy.) And while it’s true that some comedy is meant for specific eyes and ears, there is nothing particularly exclusive about “A Black Lady Sketch Show” or “Sherman’s Showcase.”

It would be a sad, static world if we only listened to voices that sounded just like ours.