70 THENEWYORKER,AUGUST19, 2019
ON TELEVISION
DANCE DANCE REVOLUTION
“Sherman’s Showcase” and “South Side.”
BY EMILY NUSSBAUM
ILLUSTRATION BY ZOHAR LAZAR
“
F
or over forty years, ‘Sherman’s
Showcase’ has been a revolution-
ary black music slash dance slash enter-
tainment program unlike anything else
on TV. Except ... for several other shows,”
John Legend announces, gliding across
a stage like a polite cheetah. A list of va-
riety shows scrolls swiftly up the screen:
“Solid Gold, Soul Train, Burt Sugarman’s
Midnight Special, Don Kirshner’s Rock
Concert, MTV’s The Grind with Eric
Nies, Caribbean Rhythms (with Ra-
chel!),” and then, more randomly, “The
Crown (Season 1)” and “Power (do you
watch it? It’s great).”
“Sherman’s Showcase,” created by
Bashir Salahuddin and Diallo Riddle,
two former Jimmy Fallon writers best
known for “Slow Jam the News,” is a
joyful Sunbeam Mixmaster of a sketch
show, a Spirograph set spinning through
decades of black pop culture, finding
faintly psychedelic patterns, in the shared
tradition of Sun Ra and K-tel. Its prem-
ise is pure meta-absurdism: we’re watch-
ing a pretend documentary about a
pretend variety show, “Sherman’s Show-
case,” a supposedly iconic series that was
launched in 1972, at a bombshell mo-
ment when “Afro-American content” re-
placed “The John Birch Comedy Hour.”
Each episode commemorates the “Sher-
man’s Showcase” legacy, exploring differ-
ent themes—the Dancers, the Ladies—
and is hosted by luminaries such as John
Legend ( John Legend), Mary J. Blige
(Bresha Webb), and Eliza Coupe (as a
Debbie Harry-adjacent diva). A shrewd
satire that doubles as an affectionate
homage, “Sherman’s Showcase” is equal
parts cerebral and silly, a floor wax and
a dessert topping.
Mainly, though, “Sherman’s Showcase,”
on IFC, is a party, just like the lost genre
of television that it’s celebrating. For all
the show’s self-awareness, it feels warm,
organic, and spontaneous, not cold or
contrived—a nice change of pace, in an
era of TV comedy defined by bleak dram-
edies and avant-garde experiments. The
show’s concept is also capacious enough
to throw in a bit of everything—in the
first episode alone, there’s a short sketch
called “Tiffany Haddish Tries Soup”;
Alex Haley touting a movie called “Plane-
Clownin’” (long story, goofy punch line);
a darkly funny “War of the Worlds” par-
ody; and an ad featuring the celebrity
spokesperson Frederick Douglass.
The mysteriously non-aging host,
Sherman, is played by Salahuddin with
amiable bombast and streaks of inse-
curity—during the first episode, he nearly
passes out after an overambitious dance
opener. “Hello, cats and kittens,” Sher-
man announces, then offers up banter
such as “We have an amazing show for
you tonight that will more than make
up for last week.” His Ed McMahon-ish
producer, Dutch (Riddle), introduces
Sherman variously as “the man who is
Jimi Hendrix’s emergency contact” and
“the first man to ever say ‘It’s all good’
when he was still clearly hurt.” Beneath
the jokes, there’s an oddly moving por-
trait of Sherman as an icon whose worst
anxiety is being forgotten, a subtheme
that pays off beautifully in the trippy
time-bent finale, which can’t be described
without sounding insane.
The fake-documentary approach has
been a sturdy one for TV comedy, from
“Monty Python’s Flying Circus” to IFC’s
celebrated “Documentary Now!” On the
British version of “The Office,” it was a
way of having your reality-TV cake and
denouncing it, too. “Sherman’s Showcase”
isn’t anywhere near so judgy: it uses its
ironic frame not so much to deconstruct
as to splash around, blissfully, in the neon
gasoline rainbow that was seventies tele-
vision. It’s also simply respectful of why
someone might want to live in the past.
“The more things change, the less I like
them!” Sherman says. “Culture peaked
in 1973. Anything after that is a God-
damned lie.... VCRs, DVDs, WTF.
Sonos? I say no-nos. Bluetooth? See a
dentist!” Later, an ad for Zenith declares,
