The story opens with anthropology professor Camille played by the stunning Meagan Good and as she puts it:
The beginning of winter signals the beginning of a season full of giant sweaters, seasonal lattes, and the irrepressible urge to burrow at home in as cozy a fashion as possible.
This is certainly true as I am tucked in my sofa wearing my fluffy pajamas as I write this review.
While Camille brings this all up to explain “cuffing season” (i.e. the colder months inspiring single people to search for a partner to burrow with), I bring it up to explain why spending time with “Harlem” feels about right at this time of year, when fun and cozy programming reigns supreme. I prefer to snuggle with my 9-month old labrador puppy. Dogs are less drama.
Anyway, Harlem is the brainchild of the creator Tracy Oliver who also gave us the smashing hit, “Girls Trip”), is the new Amazon Prime Video series that runs 10 episodes long, but flies by in no time at all. A season 2 as soon as possible, thank you, please.
Perhaps a trailer to pique your interest before I continue with my verbiage.
The season follows Camille and her group of friends, who have an “unbreakable sisterhood” that encompasses a diehard romantic Quinn (Grace Byers), up-and-coming tech maven Tye (Jerrie Johnson), and unaware singer Angie (Shoniqua Shandai).
As another show about four thirty-something friends living, laughing, loving in one of New York City’s most rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods, “Harlem” inevitably has some parallels to the viral sensation " Sex and the City.”
Harlem is a show in full and living color — with a vivid costume wardrobe to match. The kind that’ll make people yearn for real places to go again. The series, which follows four fashionable girlfriends as they navigate life, love, and isms, with a love letter to the historic Upper Manhattan epicenter of Black culture woven into the fabric of the storyline.
Still, “Harlem” has more of a bubblegum snap to it, and a different enough slate of actors and storylines to keep the two series distinct enough from each other. After all, plenty of shows have featured a white group of friends trying to make it in the big city; there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be room for two concurrent shows about Black women doing the same. I relate to Harlem especially from the perspective of a woman of color.
“Harlem,” for one, distinguishes itself by featuring an intriguing main lesbian character in Tye, who quickly becomes one of the show’s most compelling thanks to Johnson’s dynamic performance. Tye’s smart and confident in her abilities, but has a big enough chip on her shoulder to keep her from completely owning her every instinct.
And while everyone in “Harlem” is at a crossroads of sorts, as the creator of a dating app exclusively for queer people of color, Tye’s on the edge of the kind of success that could set her up for life. That Tye’s neglected to weave queer people of color into her own life outside of sex and romance is a strange and glaring aspect of her life that somehow never comes up — but she’s also far from the first gay character on TV to have an entirely straight group of friends, so it’s not entirely a surprise, either.
Meanwhile, does the most she can with Camille, a character that’s ostensibly the glue of the group but is by far the least distinct. Even as her voiceovers bookend every episode, Camille turning her anthropological lens on the rom-com exploits around her doesn’t quite work. (The pilot’s motif of having Camille aspire to be like a member of the matriarchal Mosuo clan, featuring a mute Asian woman poking into frame whenever she thinks about it, is a particularly lends a special something to the episode.)
Although Camille’s storylines are most interesting when Good gets to act opposite Dr. Elise Pruitt ( Whoopi Goldberg) as Camille’s discerning new boss, “Harlem” otherwise works best when following her friends, each of whom feels more sharply drawn.
As Quinn and Angie, Byers and Shandai bring out the most nuanced parts of their characters with ease. Byers, best known for playing slinky villain Anika on “Empire,” draws on that moneyed character to play this new one, but also demonstrates a sharp sense of timing that keeps the character of Quinn compelling. Shandai commands the screen every time she’s on it, especially as Angie gets off Quinn’s couch and into a hilariously cursed musical adaptation of “Get Out.” (The “Sunken Place” and “Liberal Family” dance numbers and set design feel just real enough to be that much more uncomfortable; it’s far too easy to imagine this production hitting Broadway any minute now…)
When together, the core four “Harlem” friends have a rapport that makes them easy to hang out with for the few hours the show takes to watch. Even when the script asks them to work in expository dialogue that sounds unnatural when spoken aloud, it otherwise leaves room for the actors to lean on each other’s performances to bring out the best in all of them. As the new year begins and we start craving some smoother entertainment to give yourselves a break while away the colder hours, the women of “Harlem” make for some fine company.
The first season of “Harlem” is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
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