Watch TV with Paul Flynn
IN 2019, HBO debuted its vaunted new comedy series, A Black Lady Sketch Show, in America. Out of the box, the central cast list of show-running boss Robin Thede and her three faithful accomplices – Quinta Brunson, Ashley Nicole Black and Gabrielle Dennis – run witty and carefree over a tired format and inject it with their own comic superpowers, divined uninterrupted from an African American POV. They wound down the season with four Emmy nominations. It is currently, belatedly, showing here and has become, by several laps, the sparkliest jewel in the tiara of the Sky Comedy roster.
A Black Lady Sketch Show is funny because it’s true, funny because it’s Black and funny because it’s ladies. Amazingly, it’s funny because of, not in spite of, the sketch show format, too. The portmanteau set pieces are cleverly workshopped across genre and left to roam to the psychedelic edges of humour. A visit to a soul-food diner takes a hall-of-mirrors existential twist. A Four Tops/soul Train review band sees our heroines, in man-drag, get slapped down as toxic misogynists in song. Thede’s tour de force earth-mother-professorial-blackademic is forever falling down a rabbit warren of ultra-wokeness, flummoxing everyone at a family wedding. Patti Labelle shows up as a guardian angel figure in a brilliant magic-realist romantic break-up sequence.
A Black Lady Sketch Show is guest-heavy in all the right places. Kelly Rowland, Issa Rae, Angela Bassett and Laverne Cox all show up to pay their marquee name dues. Keener eyes will double-take as disco siren Sheryl Lee Ralph, singer of In The Evening (possibly the best dance-floor track of all time) appears in episode three.
Yet the central foursome remain solid, as one. Some of the sharpest moments are when they sit on a sofa with a glass of wine, staring their shared experiences in the face, elegantly and effusively claiming their right to take up space. You can feel the women who have pierced and disseminated a selection of carefully aggravated archetypes laughing to themselves as they breathe life into their creations. From the title sequence to the righteous bounce of Megan Thee Stallion onwards, A Black Lady Sketch Show is pure, fresh joy.
Sky boxsets/now TV