THE NEWYORKER, AUGUST 19, 2019 71
pugnaciously, “The No. 1 name of TVs,
forever. Zenith: Shut up and buy one.”
For a sketch show, it has an excep-
tionally high hit rate. One installment
features a slick “Ocean’s 11”-type caper
movie in which Gladys Knight, Smokey
Robinson, and the Commodores plot
to break into the producer Berry Gordy’s
house to get back the money they are
owed. (Diana Ross claims that she has
been posing as Gordy’s girlfriend for
three decades to pull this off.) Another
loving episode is devoted to Prince, who
appears in the guise of a star named
Charade, singing a slinky hit called
“Vicki Is the Water Warm Enough?”
(The actual Morris Day hosts.) In the
“Ladies” episode, Sherman introduces
two female rappers by saying, excitedly,
“They recently had a Twitter war. And
though I don’t believe in Twitter, I do
believe in war!,” only to have the rap
battle devolve into bars of mutual fem-
inist support. Some of the best bits are
running jokes, like the bios in the dancer
intros: “Theresa ‘Hot Wheels’ June-
Tao—Refuses Pretzels. Survived Two
Plane Crashes. Wages Often Garnished.”
The show is one wave in a rising tide
of stylized, self-conscious African-Amer-
ican comedy, including HBO’s “Random
Acts of Flyness” and “The Black Lady
Sketch Show,” Comedy Central’s “The
New Negroes,” and the elegantly spiky
“Dear White People,” on Netflix, projects
that vary in quality and tone but share
an interest in using the past as a lens to
look at the present. “Sherman’s Showcase”
has flickers of politics—of seeing get-
ting down and making jokes as its own
form of resistance—but they shimmer
subtly, like sequins on a halter top. In
multiple senses, the show never gets old.
I
f you’re looking for something to
watch that is less niche but equally
capable, Salahuddin and Riddle also
have a very funny sitcom, “South Side,”
on Comedy Central, a family affair
co-created with Salahuddin’s brother
Sultan and co-starring his sister and his
wife. Set in Englewood, in Chicago, it’s
about Rent-T-Own, a furniture franchise
where the wannabe astronomer Kareme
(Kareme Young) and the sadsack Simon
James (Sultan Salahuddin)—two recent
community-college graduates—land in
going-nowhere jobs that are mostly repo
from dealers and deadbeats.
“Trapped in this job,” one driver
moans. “Trapped in that level of Candy
Crush.” To kill time, the staff pursues
outlandish side hustles, from black-mar-
ket Viagra to really good meatballs to a
quickie hair-wave cream (it turns out to
attract bats), which inevitably fail. The
mood is dark-humored but not grim, be-
cause the show is stuffed with slapstick
and sharp quips, slowly building a var-
ied ensemble, from Riddle’s social-climb-
ing defense attorney, who spars with the
author of “I Was Black at Yale,” to the
over-it judge who announces, “Witness
is instructed not to bring up any more
Chicago Bulls from the nineties.” Even
minor characters—like the dead-eyed,
constantly texting office manager, Stacy,
played with droll lassitude by Salahud-
din’s sister Zuri—have their own story
arcs and funny quirks.
The standouts are Bashir Salahuddin
and his wife, Chandra Russell, as char-
acters who are less good-cop, bad-cop
than bad-cop, worse-cop. Salahuddin
plays the earnest, trigger-happy Officer
Goodnight, whose hero is Michael
Winslow (of beatboxing sound-effects
fame), from “Police Academy.” Russell
is fabulously salty as Sergeant Turner, a
multi-wigged, on-the-take Englewood
local who lists her gangster boyfriend on
her phone as “Thug Penis” and snaps up
distressed real estate. Her biggest show-
down is with a braggadocious civil-rights
icon who refuses to leave her dilapidated
shack. “You little legal-pad-colored
heifer,” the geriatric woman screams at
Turner, who cowers in shock. “She used
to fuck wit Jesse Jackson,” her boyfriend
explains, solemnly. “She is somebody.”
The show is just the latest excellent
sitcom on Comedy Central: “The Other
Two” and “Corporate” are also rock
solid. But “South Side” does something
rare for TV, portraying a poor neigh-
borhood with dry-eyed wit, favoring
specificity over polemics or cliché. The
locations seem just right, from the
blankly affectless strip malls to the tem-
porary-feeling apartments. The char-
acters deepen, in surprising ways. But
the show is also willing to be hilari-
ously dumb, the duty of any smart com-
edy. “You know what Einstein said about
bees?” a hot girl says to Kareme, during
a thoughtful talk about how black peo-
ple pollinate the culture. Then she
shouts it out: “Bees nuts!”
The New Yorker
Crossword Puzzle
- Plot device sometimes
used in thrillers.
- Bad stuff to microwave.
- N.Y.C. club said to
have catalyzed the punk
movement.
- Apt to snoop.
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