SHOW OF THE WEEK (The Good Lord Bird, Oct. 4, 9 p.m., Crave)
PHOTO CREDIT: William Gray/Showtime
When actor Ethan Hawke and author James McBride spoke to the Television Critics Association in January, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were still alive and the Black Lives Matter uprising their deaths propelled hadn’t yet begun — but the continuum on which those killings and others like them sit was on the minds of everyone in that room in Pasadena, Calif.
As Hawke said then, “You can’t tell a story about America and not bump into race.”
“The Good Lord Bird” not only bumps into race but charges into the fray with ferocity, audacity and even glee alongside white abolitionist John Brown, played by Hawke.
Brown, of course, was a real person, the violent activist whose failed campaign to free every enslaved Black person in the United States is credited as the spark that began the Civil War. We see his exploits through the eyes of a fictional character, Henry Shackleford, played by Joshua Caleb Johnson (“Snowfall”), a teenage slave who ends up in Brown’s care when his father dies in a gun fight between pro-slavers in Kansas and Brown’s men.
Hawke, in an Emmy-baiting tour de force, plays Brown as firebrand and fool, hero and blunderer, consumed and sometimes blinded by his belief in the righteousness of his cause, full of compassion for the slaves he seeks to free, ruthless to those who would keep them suppressed.
McBride pointed out back in January that this is not your typical “white saviour story.” Indeed, the series takes the view that while Brown was a hero to many Black people at the time, not every Black person was a convert to his cause. Henry, nicknamed “Onion” by Brown, points out that he was never hungry or cold, or got shot at or saw a person murdered until he left the man who owned him and joined Brown’s ragtag army.
The evil of slavery is presented as a given rather than something that needs to be demonstrated, with the violence done to Blacks by white people mostly implied rather than shown. One hanging scene does more to demonstrate the moral strength of the woman who dies (Sibonia, played by Crystal Lee Brown) than the cruelty of those doing the killing.
McBride said the show, like his book, is meant to be funny and there is subtle humour throughout, starting with the fact that Brown mistakes Henry for a girl, leading him to don a dress and pose as Henrietta. “The Good Lord Bird” pokes fun at Brown himself, whom Onion describes as “nuttier than a squirrel turd.” And revered Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass (played by Daveed Diggs of “Hamilton” fame), is portrayed as a vain, pompous bigamist.
There is tragedy here too, to be sure. Brown was hanged after his doomed raid on the armoury at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, in 1859, which is the denouement of the seven-episode series.
The bigger tragedy is that despite the fact slavery was officially abolished in the United States in 1965, Black people there and elsewhere are still not free of its prejudices.
Monsterland (Oct. 2, 10 p.m., CTV Drama Channel)
“Monsterland” delivers food for thought along with its chills, the main thought being whether any of the supernatural creatures it portrays are real or just manifestations of the troubled characters in each episode.
For instance, the impoverished single mother of a difficult child (Kaitlyn Dever, excellent as always) is presented with the tantalizing idea of starting over when a killer (Jonathan Tucker) who steals the identities of his victims wanders into the diner where she works. In another episode, a fisherman (Trieu Tran) turned environmental zealot after being injured in a chemical spill makes his biggest catch of all when he finds an oil-slicked mermaid (Adria Arjona) on the beach.
And so it goes, with personal and social ills that pose threats as daunting as the monsters that haunt the lead characters.
Each episode tells a new story in a different part of the U.S.
The cast includes familiar faces like Nicole Beharie (“Sleepy Hollow”), Charlie Tahan (“Ozark”), Mike Colter (“Luke Cage”), Taylor Schilling (“Orange Is the New Black”) and Kelly Marie Tran (“Star Wars”).
“You Can’t Ask That” (Oct. 2, CBC Gem)
I confess when I first heard about this series, which is based on a successful Australian version in which people with differences of some kind are asked questions that would otherwise be deemed invasive, I thought the whole concept sounded rather rude.
In fact, after screening the first episode of the second season, I can say it’s eye-opening and inspirational.
That episode features people with disabilities like Markham’s Maria Bangash, who has a genetic condition called chromosome 9 deletion. The various subjects, including teens Saoud and Nicola, who have spina bifida; Ella, who has cerebral palsy; Kaleb-Wolf, who has with brittle bone disease; and Owen, who was born with vision and hearing impairment, are more focused on what they can do than what they can’t.
For instance, Owen’s brother Oliver, who was born with missing fingers and a thumb that points in the wrong direction, notes that “it can be hard to hold my hockey stick,” but it clearly doesn’t stop him from playing.
Asked what she would change if she could, Maria replies that she’d change nothing about herself but much about the way society perceives people with disabilities — a goal that could certainly be furthered by watching this series.
Future episodes focus on people with PTSD, deafness, schizophrenia, multiple sclerosis, bipolar disorder, Parkinson’s disease and Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
Odds and Ends
PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of MASTERPIECE
I am truly sorry I didn’t have time to screen the new “Masterpiece” crime thriller “Flesh and Blood” (PBS, Oct. 4, 9 p.m.) given the crackerjack cast. Francesca Annis (“Jane Eyre”) plays a widow who begins a romance with a retired surgeon (Stephen Rea, “The Crying Game”). Imelda Staunton (“Harry Potter,” “A Confession”) is her nosy next-door neighbour and David Bamber (“Rome,” “Pride and Prejudice”) is the detective who investigates when things go awry. PBS also has the political drama “Cobra” (Oct. 4, 10 p.m.) with another stellar cast, including Robert Carlyle (“Once Upon a Time,” “Trainspotting”), Richard Dormer (“Game of Thrones”), Victoria Hamilton (“The Crown”), David Haig (“Penny Dreadful”) and Lucy Cohu (“Ripper Street”).
Good news for fans of classic peak TV: all seven seasons of “Mad Men” are to be available on Amazon Prime Video as of Oct. 1.
Oct. 2 is a busy day for new releases. Netflix has “Emily in Paris,” a fish-out-of-water tale created by Darren Star of “Sex and the City” fame, starring Lily Collins as a young American woman who gets a job with a marketing firm in the City of Light. On Crave, there’s “Kingdom of Silence,” (9 p.m.), a documentary by Rick Rowley about the murder of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi; while HBO has Season 2 of martial arts action series “Warrior” at 11 p.m. There’s also Vol. 2 of the “Savage X Fenty Show,” featuring fashion by Rihanna, on Amazon Prime.
If you like shows about funny people, check out “The Comedy Store” (Oct. 4, 10 p.m., Crave), an ode to the famous L.A. club that has been a training ground for numerous famous comedians, many of whom are featured in this docuseries talking about the good old days.
I had almost forgotten about “The Walking Dead.” Truth be told, it’s been a long time since I thought the show was any good so I tend to hate-watch it more than anything. But if you are a diehard, AMC has the Season 10 finale Oct. 4 at 9 p.m., along with the spinoff “The Walking Dead: World Beyond” the same night at 10 p.m. And you thought zombies were hard to kill.
Finally, Showcase has “Tell Me a Story” (Sept. 30, 10 p.m.), which reimagines classic fairy tales as dark, modern psychological thrillers, starting with “The Three Little Pigs,” “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Hansel and Gretel.”
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