Once in a while a show will come on that's must-see TV. For me, it was Dallas in the 1970s and '80s; Lou Grant in the '70s, a series about reporters at a Los Angeles daily newspaper; City of Angels, a 2000 series set in an urban hospital, with a mostly African-American cast (it lasted two seasons); and Smash (2012-2013) which concerned itself with the behind-the-scenes drama of mounting a Broadway musical about Marilyn Monroe called Bombshell. Other shows in the must-see category are Monk, Mad Men, and the reality shows Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (the original version) and Shark Tank.
Lately, it's been the weekly night time soap opera Saints & Sinners on the Bounce channel. When I began watching it last year, I thought it was a new series. Consulting the entertainment website IMDb, I learned it debuted in 2016.
Set in a Georgia town called Cypress, the mostly African-American characters are every bit as corrupt, conniving, backstabbing, adulterous, and homicidal as any characters in a white night time or daytime soap. And each week I'm glued to my TV set eager to find out what happens next.
I'm not sure if Saints & Sinners is a candidate for an NAACP Image Award. After all it does depict African-American characters unfavorably. But let's face it, black people in real life are not angels. And there are people in the black community who are corrupt, ruthless, greedy, and murderous. In other words, not nice people. It's foolish to pretend that such people don't exist among us. In fact, it's good to see a show about African-Americans that's not a clown show, that shows us as being human, warts and all, like every other ethnic group in America.
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