If you ask a lot of Black people — especially Black people of a certain age — what the golden era of Black TV and film is, I imagine most of them would say the 1990s, or maybe the ‘80s. They’d probably say it was the Spike Lee era. The prime Eddie Murphy era. The Cosby Show, A Different World, Martin, Living Single, and Fresh Prince of Bel-Air era.
And they might be right. When I think about my favorite Black classics — Friday, Harlem Nights, Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, Devil in a Blue Dress — they’re mostly from that era.
Still, whenever I hear people — especially Black people — lament that “they just don’t make’em like they used to,” I find myself wanting to sit them down and wake them up to everything they’ve been sleeping on over at least the last 10 years.
In fact, I would argue that the last decade should go down as one of the best and certainly the weirdest, most unconventional, freest, least confined, least pigeonholed, most out-of-the-box eras in Black film and TV history.
Our actors and filmmakers aren’t nearly as confined to the boxes of comedy, rom-com, drama, and historical drama as they’d been for generations. We’re getting surrealism, afro-futurism, and stories that don’t so often have to come with a heaping side of trauma or buffoonery.
I’m just saying, Robert Townsend’s Hollywood Shuffle came out in 1987, and the issues raised in the film continued to plague Black creatives for decades to come. Even shows like Chappelle’s Show and The Boondocks, which were much more nuanced, ended up being cut short due to the interference of white showrunners and executives who were not of the culture and did not care about it.
Now, Black creatives have knocked down all those doors. We’re dabbling in all the genres. We are now in what I like to call our oddball era, and it’s the kind of consistent Black programming I’ve been waiting for my whole life.
That being said, here are some of the best, oddest, most innovative Black movies and TV shows gifted to the entertainment world over the last decade.
Atlanta
Now, I’ve already written about how Donald Glover’s Atlanta is one of the greatest shows in TV history. If someone had only watched the first scene of the pilot, they might have thought it was just another hood dreams show, with a rapper trying to escape street life. And the show was that. And also not that at all. Atlanta was a show that didn’t care about conventional storytelling.
It didn’t care about catering to any particular audience. This was a hilarious, dramatic, weird, surrealist, artistic masterpiece that can’t be categorized in a single genre, and had a method to its madness that was simply up to the viewer to navigate. And what a ride it was. This series catapulted the careers of Brian Tyree Henry, LaKeith Stanfield, and Zazie Beetz because those three actors, teamed up with Glover, brought to life some of the most well-written and well-crafted characters in TV history, and they bodied those roles. The show was that good, and it left us wanting so much more.
Insecure
First of all, we can’t even talk about HBO’s Insecure without talking about what preceded it: Issa Rae’s hit web series Awkward Black Girl. Rae gave us her authentic self: a quirky, awkward, nerdy-but-still-very-much-Blackity-Black girl, navigating relationships, her career ambitions, and the day-to-day of living in her skin.
Then, in 2016, not long after Atlanta came to FX, Insecure came to HBO. Issa Rae blessed the world with Issa Dee and an ensemble cast of friends, boyfriends, love interests, enemies, frenemies, and neighborhood characters with neighborhood shenanigans, living the millennial life in Los Angeles. Insecure was far from your average rom-com. It kept a focus on dating and relationships, but it also addressed racism, anti-Blackness, the public education system, the world of Black art and Black writers. And don’t get me started on Issa’s solo freestyle sessions in the mirror.
This show was an instant classic for a reason.
The Get Down
If anyone were to ask what canceled show I would bring back if I could, I’m answering The Get Down every time. This series about the birth of hip-hop — depicted through a more modernized lens — was an ode to the culture that never got the accolades it deserved. The style, the cinematography, the celebration of Black music, including rap music and the genres that inspired it — it was a fictionalized hip-hop history lesson told from its birthplace in the South Bronx. It had all the makings of a cultural masterpiece. It would’ve been nice to see where that ride was going.
Get Out
When I first saw Jordan Peele’s thriller-slash-horror-slash-dark comedy Get Out in the theater in 2017, I was blown away. I went in not knowing what to expect—but it wasn’t that. When I saw the trailer for Get Out, with a Black guy (Daniel Kaluuya) and his white girlfriend (Allison Williams) pulled over to the side of a road in the middle of nowhere, being questioned by the police, I half expected it to be another movie that tries to tackle racism, but ends up doing so in ways that are ham-fisted and corny. But Peele hit it out of the park with a clever, spooky, funny, brilliant piece of art with a fresh approach to confronting racial dynamics in America. Such a great film. And so wonderfully weird.
Sorry to Bother You
Alright, it’s time for us to enter into the wild world of rapper, producer, songwriter, and filmmaker Boots Riley, and talk about his first feature film, Sorry to Bother You. In this dark comedy-slash-sci-fi-slash-sociopolitical satire-slash-rom-com-kinda, Cassius “Cash” Green, played by LaKeith Stanfield (y’all remember him from Get Out and Atlanta; I told you that show made them all stars), is a Black telemarketer in Oakland who uses a “white voice” to achieve massive corporate success before uncovering a massive biological conspiracy. It’s like Living Large if that movie did LSD. It’s really weird, and awesome.
A Black Lady Sketch Show
Another Black gem that was cut short before it really got to shine as bright as it might have was Robin Thede’s A Black Lady Sketch Show, which, of course, did bless us with four seasons, so I won’t complain too much. This Emmy Award-winner, which made history by having the first all-Black women’s writers’ room, turned the sketch comedy genre on its head. The sketches were smart and original. Even when they weren’t necessarily laugh-out-loud funny, you would still marvel at the creativity. Not since Chappelle’s Show had I seen a sketch comedy series that made me ask, “Who could even think of that?” as often as BLSS.
Lovecraft Country
OK, this is another one that is hard to explain to people who have never seen it. Misha Green’s Lovecraft Country is basically Indiana Jones if the wicked curse our heroes were trying to save the world from was white people. I’m joking — kinda. This story begins with Atticus Freeman, a young Black veteran played by Jonathan Majors, embarking on a journey across the U.S. in search of his father, Montrose Freeman (Michael K. Williams). Joined by his friend Letitia (Jurnee Smollett) and his Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance), Atticus and his team end up on a dark, twisted adventure that, again, you would just have to see for yourself. Lovecraft Country is another Black show that got canceled far too soon, especially considering how popular it was. It’s a shame how much harder our brilliant creatives have to be in an industry that has defaulted to whiteness for the overwhelming majority of its existence. A damn shame.
The Book of Clarence
Stanfield is back again in Jeymes Samuel’s 2023 biblical comedy-drama film The Book of Clarence. In this religious satire, Clarence is a down-on-his-luck resident of 33 AD Jerusalem, where he’s in deep debt to a local loan shark named Jedediah the Terrible, who lives up to his moniker. Anyway, a bunch of other stuff happens, and Clarence starts his own ministry, or cult, or alternative Jesus following, or something like that. Clarence is basically performing “miracles” behind a paywall. I won’t give away anything else. It’s a great film. Go watch it if you haven’t yet.
They Cloned Tyrone
“I ain’t been right with Jesus since I pimped this girl named Mary!” — I swear this was my third favorite Jamie Foxx role behind Ray and Django Unchained.
They Cloned Tyrone is another piece of beautiful Black art that, much like Atlanta, is like a Trojan Horse that comes to you looking like a regular-degular hood flick, but then busts out of its sides, revealing a sci-fi mystery comedy about a secret government shadow conspiracy controlling an inner-city neighborhood called The Glen, where the lead character, Fontaine (John Boyega), is a local drug dealer who gets shot and killed one night, kinda, but not really. Fontaine, back from the kinda-but-not-really-dead, works with local pinp Slick Charles (Foxx) and sex worker-slash-aspiring detective Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris) to uncover a mystery you just have to see to believe.
Sinners
Alright, y’all, I’m not even going to insult your Black intelligence by trying to tell you anything you don’t already know about Ryan Coogler’s masterpiece, Sinners. You already know, and if you don’t, we at NewsOne have already talked about it at length here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. I mean, it — it was kind of a big deal.
In fact, all you really need to know about the greatness that is Sinners is this…
This is a short list of Black films and TV shows that could have gone on and on. It could’ve included I’m A Virgo, I Love Boosters, The Harder They Fall, Swarm, The Vince Staples Show, Us, Nope, HBO’s Watchmen, Supacell, Grand Crew, Abbott Elementary, and everything else I’ll probably kick myself for not remembering to include later. It has been a great decade for Black entertainment, y’all. The doors have all been kicked down, and our creatives are running through them three or four at a time. Don’t sleep on that.
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