Image via Complex Original
Our current political climate has made us all well aware of the importance of paying attention to news and information while considering the impact on the underserved. But, how many times can we rise up before we just need to sit down?
“I don’t think modern day activists are misguided […] Because we’re still fighting the same fight,” impassioned activist Kwame Rose tells Television Critics Association in journalists in July during a panel discussion for HBO’s documentary, Baltimore Rising, which is about the swift and emotional reaction to Freddie Gray’s death that swept that city. “We’re still fighting for voting rights. We’re still fighting for healthcare. We’re still fighting for equality and basically being recognized as human beings.”
His and several other new and recent television shows and miniseries are here to ensure we stay woke even when we’re too tired to leave the couch.
Hood Adjacent
Network: Comedy Central
Premiere date: Airing now on CC.com
James Davis told Complex and other journalists during a press day in June that his new series, which is an evolution of his slang-themed showcase, Urban Dictionary, at Los Angeles’ NerdMelt, is “Chappelle Show meets The Daily Show.” Because this is a comedy show after all, a segment about “walking while black” receives the same amount of levity as one on understanding the Beyhive’s devotion. James says he doesn’t want to be “preachy” as much as be “the dude in the middle” pointing out the various viewpoints.
Is he worked up about the misappropriation of words, as some would argue the title of this article is doing? “I like the idea of people understanding and including people,” he says. “Appropriation is a part of life and it’s how you do it and your intentions behind it.”
Top of the Lake: China Girl
Network: Sundance TV
Premiere date: September 10, 9 p.m.
Like the first iteration—which garnered star Elisabeth Moss a Golden Globe win and an Emmy nomination—this chapter of creators Jane Campion and Gerard Lee story of a female police detective (and rape survivor) is about more than solving another horrific case. Although it is a work of fiction, prepare to contemplate the realities of female sex trafficking, class systems and PTSD (plus, for a bit of comic relief, there’s Game of Thrones’ favorite Gwendoline Christie as another officer desperately hoping to make Robin her mentor).
Moss told critics at TCA in July that Campion has a way of shedding “this light on these different facets that are quite […] ugly and horrific at times but in a way that is not judgmental. It’s just honest […] They are very, very present in our world, and they are very important to pay attention to. We sort of tend to brush them under the rug sometimes.”
The Vietnam War
Network: PBS
Premiere date: September 17, 8 p.m.
When I was a kid, I asked my mom why our country wasn’t as eager to acknowledge those who fought in Vietnam as we were World War II soldiers. The latest project from documentarians Ken Burns and Lynn Novick has the answers she couldn’t give in a project that looks at, as on Burns describes to TCA audiences in July, “the most important event in United States history since the Second World War.”
These interviews with nearly 80 witnesses – military and civilians and on all sides – have been condensed to 10 episodes and 18 hours of footage and will hopefully, Burns adds, “lend credence to the idea that there isn’t a single truth in the war, that, in fact, there’s many truths that can coexist, and that might help to sort of take the fuel rods out of the division and polarization that was born in Vietnam that continues to this moment.” As for its timeliness in coming out during Trump-era MAGA rallying cries? Merrill McPeak, a retired four-star general who fought in Vietnam and now appears in this documentary, tells TCA audiences that he hopes the project “will provide, we hope, the basis for a national dialogue, which may include countervailing views if they show up.”
The State
Network: National Geographic Channel
Premiere date: September 18, 9 p.m.
Having absolutely zero to do with the mid-90s MTV sketch show with the same name, this is a four-part miniseries from writer-director Peter Kosminsky (Wolf Hall) that looks at how ISIS recruits its young members. While it is technically fiction because the characters are composites of real people, Kosminsky stressed to TCA audience members in July that “everything that takes place in the drama actually took place in the research in real life. We haven’t invented any incidents; we just composited the characters.” In other words, prepare to see how normal humans transform into the faceless villains that cover our newspapers and magazines.
Do not, however, think this is a show about the radicalization of Islamic youth in Europe.
“It seems to cross the demographic completely,” Kosminsky adds. “I mean, obviously it’s slanted toward young people. But in terms of educational attainment, in terms of economic background, there’s a full range of people going.”
The Opposition with Jordan Klepper
Network: Comedy Central
Premiere date: September 25, 11:30 p.m.
Hoping to revive the back-to-back viewing magic that was The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report, this new companion series to The Daily Show with Trevor Noah will allow comedian Jordan Klepper to take on a character that he says is “inspired by the points of view” of alt-right media hosts like Alex Jones (the show’s first full trailer is reminiscent of Cold War-era propaganda films and has Klepper arguing that “China isn’t real”).
“There has been a great normalization of bullshit in America,” Klepper tells the TCA audience in July. “America has always had its level of bullshit, it’s McCarthyism, its 9/11 truthers, its birthers, it’s Ted Cruz’s dad is on the grassy knoll. That has always been in America, but it’s usually been on the fringe. But recently, something happened. And in November, we elected the most famous conspiracy theorist in the world to the highest office in the land and, boom, normalization began.”
I Love You, America
Network: Hulu
Premiere date: October 12
Liberal Jewish comedian and social media shit-stirrer Sarah Silverman is getting her own weekly news show, where—as she told audiences in July at TCA—she hopes to “connect with un like-minded people,” be it a field piece where she has dinner with a small-town Southern family who’d yet to meet a Jewish person or a recurring segment that features what she calls “a focus group [of] about 12 people from all different walks of life.” Sounds hysterical, right? Silverman also promises that any intellect gleaned from her show, which counts Adam McKay as an executive producer, ”will be served in a big, fat, bready sandwich of super, super dumb. Because that’s how I like my comedy, and I don’t like to be told what to think.”
Flint
Network: Lifetime
Premiere date: October 28, 8 p.m.
“So today is 1,190 days since we’ve had clean water in Flint, with no end in sight,” activist Melissa Mays told journalists during TCA, where she also offered to let us sniff or drink from the bottled water she’d brought from her home in Flint, Michigan “in case anybody wanted to take a risk.” Did I mention she said this in July? Many more days have gone by since then and the people of Flint are still wondering if it’s safe to shower, cook or do any number of other things that we do almost involuntarily.
Mays is portrayed by Marin Ireland in this film, which also stars Queen Latifah, Jill Scott and Betsy Brandt as the real women who held their local government accountable for poisoning its denizens. If you don’t want to watch, at least get your own water tested.
The Long Road Home
Network: National Geographic Channel
Premiere date: November 7, 9 p.m.
Based on journalist Martha Raddatz’s best-seller about the Fort Hood 1st Calvary Division that was ambushed in 2004 in Sadr City, this miniseries stars Jeremy Sisto, Michael Kelly and Sarah Wayne Callies and is a reminder of the sacrifices that so many in the military and their families are making as we grapple on Twitter about avocado toast. “I would hope that, after watching this, the viewer gets a more complete understanding of the total picture of […] the different perspectives involved with the fight, and the repercussions of how individuals dealt with that,” Aaron Fowler, a soldier involved in the ambush who was also a production consultant on this project tells the TCA audience in July. “I think it’s a part of the story that has never been told yet, and I’m excited that they get it out there. I would like America to have a complete understanding of exactly what my friends and family sacrificed.”
I Am Elizabeth Smart
Network: Lifetime
Premiere date: November 18, 8 p.m.
Elizabeth Smart says she’s one of the “lucky” ones. Yes, her kidnapping and subsequent rape when she was 14 made her an international sensation and are therefore unavoidable facts that probably follow her every time she makes a dinner reservation. But her abductor was a stranger. She tells TCA journalists In July that “the majority of kidnappings and sexual violence that goes on today comes from the family or someone that you know.” This is why she is not only allowing her story to be told in a television movie; she’s producing and narrating it (Alana Boden, who is best known for the Canadian drama Ride, plays Smart). “They need to know that what happened to them, they don’t deserve it,” Smart says. “They don’t need to keep their mouth shut. They deserve to be happy. They deserve to be safe.” (A companion two-part documentary special, Elizabeth Smart: Autobiography, airs November 12 and 13 on A&E).
Baltimore Rising
Network: HBO
Premiere date: November 2017
The Wire actress and activist Sonja Sohn directs and executive produces this documentary that looks at why a history of over policing, drug wars and a faulty penal system permeated a visceral reaction to the news of Freddie Gray’s death in the back of a Baltimore police van in 2015—and how activists, police enforcement and other leaders are now attempting to salvage the Maryland metropolis. Consider it a lesson on putting aside debates about #BlackLivesMatter versus #AllLivesMatter and actually listening to one another.