Godfather of Harlem airs Sundays on Epix. If the idea of a history-crime show set in 1960s Harlem is something that your TV-scent receptors twitch for (as they do mine), Godfather of Harlem will-mostly-give you what you’re looking for. I don’t think Godfather of Harlem is going to be enough to boost Epix into the top tier, but it continues their upward trend of worthwhile programming. Epix gave a home to the terrific Perpetual Grace, LTD earlier this year, and also has the Alfred-the-Butler origin show Pennyworth and the well-regarded Get Shorty and Berlin Station. Godfather of Harlem plays on Epix, a relatively low-profile network in the age of Prestige TV, but one that’s worth double-checking to see if your cable subscription includes. The peripheral characters, whenever Bumpy's not on screen, are a distraction. I just hope it maintains focus on Bumpy and the space that exists between his conflict with the Italians and his role in providing stability and safety for his "hometown" of Harlem. And having seen half of the first season, I’m intrigued to see where the show goes from here-the 1960s Harlem it conjures is absorbing and visually interesting. ![]() The trio of Whitaker, D’Onofrio, and Esposito are enough to make anything worth watching, and they’re matched by a superb Nigél Thatch as Malcolm X (the actor reprises his role from Selma) Thatch's solid work renders the historic elements of the show believable and exciting. With only a slim body of recorded work to his name, guitar guru Ted Greene remains best known as a teacher and theoretician. As I said earlier, the show mostly bobs along at a level of “pretty good,” and every now and then it crests higher than that. And Bumpy’s relationship with Elise, a heroin addict, has some interesting threads, but the intense drama of their relationship feels diagrammed by the script rather than actively expressed on screen. As the series goes on, she’s revealed to have some sneaky goings-on of her own, but in the first five episodes, the character has yet to fully spring to life. Other subplots concern Bumpy’s wife, Mayme (Ilfenesh Hadera), who seems to exist mostly to look disapprovingly at Bumpy every time he comes home from doin’ crimes. ![]() Teddy’s song, “Rise,” is meant to be a powerful protest anthem, but it’s both a forgettably ho-hum tune and wholly out-of-character for the time period it sounds more like a Lenny Kravitz track used in a Microsoft Surface Pro commercial. The outside signifiers all point to Epix’s Godfather of Harlem being something exceptional: It stars the excellent Forest Whitaker as Bumpy Johnson, a real-life Harlem crime boss who. ![]() Their forbidden love is meant to be a metaphor for the civil rights movement at large, which means they’re symbols rather than characters, and thus are largely uninteresting. The worst subplot concerns Gigante’s daughter Stella (Lucy Fry) and her surreptitious romance with a Black musician, Teddy ( Luce’s Kelvin Harrison Jr., similarly irritating here).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |