Television Fiona Rae
An honest comedy series about trying to make it in Atlanta’s hip-hop scene ticks all the boxes.
It turns out that a guy from Community is some kind of genius who has succeeded where Martin Scorsese, Cameron Crowe and Baz Luhrmann failed.
Atlanta (SoHo, Sky 010, Thursday, 8.30pm), created by American actor, writer, comedian and musician Donald Glover, is the music series that Vinyl, Roadies and The Get Down should have been.
Where those bloated shows – two of which have been cancelled – sought to define whole musical eras, Atlanta keeps it specific to a place and time, maintaining an authentic African-American experience.
It’s like a hip-hop comedy version of The Wire: Glover plays Earn, a smart guy who’s not exactly winning at life – he’s a Princeton dropout, has no money and is trying to get back in the good graces of girlfriend Vanessa (Zazie Beetz), the mother of his daughter. When his rapper cousin Alfred (Brian Tyree Henry), known as Paper Boi, goes viral on YouTube, Earn sees an opportunity for a better life as Boi’s manager.
Glover is already well known for his role as nerdy Troy Barnes in beloved comedy series Community, but he honed his scripting skills as a staff writer on 30 Rock, having been hired by Tina Fey at 23. For Atlanta, he assembled an all-black writing crew and hired Hiro Murai, with whom he has made music videos, to direct.
The show can swing from comedy to tragedy in a heartbeat: being arrested is portrayed as waiting-room purgatory, full of oddball characters, but also sums up police brutality, treatment of the mentally ill and transphobia in one precise package. A drug dealer casually shoots a guy; an internet troll harasses Boi; Earn and Vanessa attend a party thrown by a rich white guy and his bourgeois black wife. It’s funny because it’s true, and the show’s specific setting (Glover grew up in
Atlanta) belies its universal themes.
“The thing that I’m most proud of is that we got away with being honest,” Glover told the Daily Beast. “The things that people are most attracted to online are the things that are the realest, the most honest. I feel like that’s a part of being black that people don’t see. I’m trying to make people feel black.”
Atlanta has already been renewed for a second season. Meanwhile, Glover has been cast as the young Lando Calrissian in a Star Wars movie, has an unspecified Spider-Man: Homecoming role and has just put out his third album.