6 DIVERSE DRAMA TV SHOWS TO WATCH
(Written on our original website in April 2020)
6 DIVERSE DRAMA TV SHOWS TO WATCH DURING LOCKDOWN
As lockdown continues for many people around the world, our chances of spending time with people who are different from us are drastically narrowed. At the Other Box, we often talk about diversifying your media inputs to expose you to realities and perspectives you might not otherwise be familiar with. So here are 6 diverse drama shows to watch online that give nuanced perspectives of marginalised voices.
Do you have a diverse show or movie recommendation? Let us know on Twitter or Instagram @OtherBox. And if you haven’t already, check out last week’s post for 5 diverse comedy shows on Netflix.
THIS IS US
It’s difficult to give a brief overview without spoilers but what I will say is: This Is Us is one of my most favourite TV shows, and that’s no easy feat. It’s a captivating American family dramedy (drama with comedic elements) TV series that follows the lives of the Pearson family over different time frames. It covers themes from relationships, race, addiction, weight, adoption, mental health, death and family relations.
As you move through the 4 seasons, the storytelling gets better and better. I’m not sure how they put you through such an emotional rollercoaster where you can be laughing one minute and sobbing the next. And with the element of surprise sprinkled throughout, you never know where the show will take you next.
The show's diversity isn’t perfect; we’re given strong, complex female leads but stay within familiar gender norms rooted in heterosexual social systems; we’re shown two LGBTQ+ characters, but their storylines aren’t ever fully explored. However, when they do explore topics, I can’t fault the mix of sweetness and hard-boiled dialogue and praise the diversity of the writing room behind the show, which includes people of different races, genders, ages and body types, allowing the nuance of these authentic stories to be told.
This Is Us is the ultimate comfort television; it’s sentimental, familiar, warm and gripping - and I can guarantee there is a storyline that will open up some relevant conversations you can identify with.
POSE
Pose is a ground-breaking show that delves deep into the lives of transgender women and people of colour identifying within the LGBTQ+ community. It is set to the backdrop of New York’s ballroom culture during the late ’80s.
It’s at the height of the AIDS crisis when we meet Blanca Rodriguez, a trans woman who finds out that she is HIV-positive. The news inspires her to leave the ballroom ‘family’ she’s part of, House of Abundance, to form a rival one, the House of Evangelista, so she can pave her own way and build her own house to leave a legacy behind. We see all of the characters' complexities as they go from moments of strength and empowerment to fragility and pain, tackling issues from grief and illness to gender confirmation surgery.
As the main character, Blanca, competes against her old mentor, Elektra Abundance, for the title ‘House Mother of the Year’, the show explores these soap-style conflicts of ballroom culture in the context of a wider society divided by racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. The show also explores the concept of ‘family’ as we’re shown the juxtaposition of ‘chosen families’ with Blanca becoming a ‘House Mother’ and hear many stories from other gay and trans characters who were rejected by their biological families and turn to their communities for love, care and support.
The surrounding hype and long list of awards and accolades for this hit show are well deserved with its sharp, emotive dialogue and spearheading focus on diversity and representation of LGBT+ experiences. Pose is well-written and beautifully shot, with a fabulous soundtrack covering everything from disco to R’n’B (the full soundtrack is now on Spotify - you’re welcome!). The show also has the largest transgender cast of any TV show (both in front and behind the camera), with trans writers Janet Mock and Our Lady J working on the script and directing certain episodes.
Although Pose is a story of struggle with the looming shadow of the AIDS crisis’s impact on the characters, it is still a fun, buoyant, and heartfelt show that celebrates family, love, and self-acceptance. It’s also a show of understanding and education, as we get to experience the lives of some of the most marginalised people in our society and have their stories take centre-stage with a narrative that is compassionate, considered, and nuanced. If you can’t tell, I highly recommend it.
ON MY BLOCK
On My Block is a Netflix coming-of-age comedy-drama (2 seasons) that I got through in less than a week!
I think ‘goofy comedy’ describes the show perfectly, as we delve into the lives of Black and Latinx families from a fictional neighbourhood called Freeridge, in South Los Angeles. Drawing inspiration from the writers’ own experiences, the series revolves around four friends navigating their way through ‘normal’ coming-of-age hurdles from school, relationships (romantic and platonic), to gang violence and turf wars, as well as tackling topics on identity such as race, immigration, and racial profiling from an informed place.
From a diversity and inclusion perspective, the show is not without problematic character arcs. The core group of friends includes one girl amongst the quartet, Monse, an Afro-Latina who’s sexualised from the beginning as she returns from summer camp with her chest more apparent and is met with her friends saying ‘Monse got boobs’, then followed by a series of unsettling male attention thrown her way. Although the characters are all from marginalised backgrounds through their racial identity, narratives such as LGBTQ+ and disability are never approached - but they’re not mishandled either. As highlighted in the progressive script, Ruby states in a scene: ”Why are we deciding the baby's gender? The baby should be deciding for itself.” but we’re not given any characters from the respective identities.
On My Block is so charming, and perfectly straddles comedy and drama so you’ll be laughing one minute, or solemn the next. I’d say the show is different to anything we’ve seen before when it comes to the ‘coming-of-age’ style narrative, it focuses solely on young people of colour (from inner-city Black and Latinx neighbourhoods), dealing with issues arising in their local communities as well as looking at intergenerational families, societal issues along with wonderful acting. At 30 minutes an episode, definitely get this on your watch list!
GLOW
GLOW is an acronym for Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, and is a fictionalised series of the real-life wrestling circuit of the same name that existed in the 80s. Admittedly the first draw for me was definitely not the diversity or representation but I was absolutely LIVING for the costumes, make-up, hairstyling and music of that decade.
In fact, I would say the first season would lose on most counts for intersectional diversity. It mostly revolves around two straight white women, the somewhat whiny and Ruth Wilder and her friend Debbie Eagan who have a spectacular falling out over an affair within the first few episodes (so far, rather white-heteronormative). They both join an ensemble wrestling cast for a TV show – the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling – where we’re introduced to an array of women representing different ethnicities and experiences who will play wrestling characters for this show-within-a-show format. All the wrestling alter-egos in the show are vile racist and sexist stereotypes that really jar at first – I mean, they have names like ‘Junk Chain’, ‘Welfare Queen’, ‘Machu Picchu’ and, um, ‘Beirut the Mad Bomber’, to name but a few...all played by black women and women of colour! But bear with. Because by the second season I realised the genius of this show-within-a-show format: by having the racist and sexist stereotypes out on the ring in their wrestling ‘alter-egos’, the characters are then given room to brilliantly develop away from the ring, with nuanced storylines that I would argue are rarely seen on screen. It covers sexuality, race, gender, body positivity, parenthood, adoption, love, obsession, greed and more. By the third season, I was floored by the genius of it.
A stand-out episode for me is in season 3 where they take a camping trip. At night, the black and brown characters settle round the campfire and end up sharing their experiences of racism and sexism. Only at the end of the episode do we realise that the white female characters were lost on a hike, hence removing and decentring the white gaze from this important sharing of black and brown trauma. It sounds deep, but GLOW manages to do all of this in an extremely entertaining and watchable way. If you find the first few episodes difficult to get into, I urge you to persist, as it really hits its stride half way through the first season and definitely into the second and third seasons.
KILLING EVE
I’ve never met anyone who hasn’t been hooked with Killing Eve from the get go. Eve Polastri (played by Sandra Oh), is a British intelligence investigator tasked with capturing psychopathic assassin Villanelle (Jodie Comer). While I am no fan of spy action thrillers, this show is a sparkling exception. What makes it boundary-pushing for its genre is that its two lead characters are women, one openly bisexual, the other a woman of colour, both fiercely intelligent, complex, and completely obsessed with one another. As they enter their cat-and-mouse chase we learn so much about their characters, their motivations, their loves, their losses. It’s compelling watching, brilliantly written and – it must be said – the wardrobe and costumes are almost a character in their own right, they’re so good.
At the time of writing this, season 3 has just kicked off. A perfect accompaniment to the show is the podcast Obsessed With...Killing Eve available on BBC Sounds, where journalists Naomi Shimada and Zing Tsjeng dissect the show, it’s strengths, shortcomings and everything in between. It’s definitely a tonic to the lockdown blues.
Orange is the New Black (OITNB)
Ahhh good old Orange is the New Black.This show is one of the original Netflix Originals - it premiered seven whole years ago in 2013 and, among a host of awards and accolades, holds the title of Netflix’s most-watched original series. There are many many reasons why, and I would argue that its diversity and representation is at least half of those reasons. We’re introduced to the series through its main protagonist Piper Chapman, a woman in her thirties living in New York City who is sentenced to 15 months in Litchfield Penitentiary, a minimum-security women's federal prison in upstate New York. But over the 7 seasons, Piper’s story falls almost by the wayside as the show opens out to an ensemble of characters making up the inmates and staff in the prison.
I love how the show uses flashbacks to develop each character's storyline, revealing to us a little something of their pre-prison life, and what got them there. And within the prison, we see life unfold, with scandals, dramas, corruption and more – all, importantly, through a female centric lens that allows the characters to be so much more than flat stereotypes (although stereotypes do sometimes crop up). The show has a diverse representation of race, ethnicity, age, sexuality, gender, disability and over its 7 seasons, manages to give equal airtime to almost every character, which is an amazing feat, when there are over 20 named people in the main character list, and over 50 recurring characters.
What shows have you watched that surprised you with their nuance and inclusivity in storytelling? We’d love to know! Tweet us or comment on our Instagram post @OtherBox.
