Fresh off the Kwaku Network - well OK a day late, we have news of a new TV series based on the People of the Dons. Yay! Felicia Lee's article in the NYT is a must-read.
The show, “Baldwin Hills,” follows the lives of a group of mostly hip, affluent black teenagers, most of whom live in the neighborhood here that gives the show its name. It is one of five shows beginning on the BET network this month, as it introduces 16 shows through 2008, the biggest lineup of debuts in its 27-year history.
“You’re talking about a class of people invisible to the mainstream,” Byron Phillips, executive vice president for entertainment at BET, said of the characters in “Baldwin Hills” as he and other executives watched a flat-screen television showing the teenagers at a party.
I grew up and partied with the folks that comprised the 'black Beverly Hills' in LA, which was Baldwin Hills, the Dons, View Park, Windsor Hills, Ladera Heights and all that. And I've been complaining, basically ever since 'Boyz N the Hood' came out that we were only getting a fraction of the picture on the screen. I have every expectation that Hudlin and company are going to do a good job, and it will be nice to see (perhaps) some of my Hollywood associates get some writing jobs after the great famine in the wake of the demise of the WB. The Hudlin brothers definitely know the flavor of the hood, and I think they know the burbs and the hill as well. They were the ones who broke out with House Party starring Kid & Play and basically launched the film career of Martin Lawrence.
Martin's show was a staple of the upscale 90s as well as Frank's Place and a few other post-Cosby shows like Living Single. But like those shows there was no decent interaction between upscale parents and upscale teens & kids. The best of that has been 'My Wife and Kids' by Damon Wayans and 'Everybody Hates Chris' hasn't been bad at all. So I'm looking forward to seeing that dynamic which I hope is handled in Baldwin Hills.
I also wouldn't be surprised if some of the green in the greenlight on this deal wasn't influenced by none other than Orson Scott Card, who wrote about my old stomping grounds after he became fascinated by the stories and folks that came out of that era. I don't know whether the series is set in the present or the past, but I definitely have it on the Tivo for real.
This is the first show since 'The Women of Brewster Place' that I've really been excited to see on BET, and that was in 89 or so. I hope it's authentic enough to show my kids. But even if it's not, it's a step in the right direction for Hudlin and BET, and more evidence of the reality of the transparency of black culture in America.
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