Stream It Or Skip It: ‘A Black Lady Sketch Show’ On HBO, Which Is Exactly As Its Title Describes

What makes for a good sketch show? Funny stars, of course. Funny writing that speaks to common experiences, definitely. But a point of view is always important, and some sketch shows don’t really have that. But a new show on HBO, A Black Lady Sketch Show, has that point of view, as what we think is the first sketch show created by, written and starring Black women. Read on for more…

A BLACK LADY SKETCH SHOW: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A thick fog rolls into a wooded area. A frightened woman, dressed in brown sweats and a brown knit cap, tries to outrun the fog as it rolls in.

The Gist: A Black Lady Sketch Show is pretty much what the title describes. Four women, who are Black, doing sketches about being a woman of color today. The regular troupe consists of Robin Thede, Ashley Nicole Black, Gabrielle Dennis and Quinta Brunson; Thede is the show’s creator and executive producer, along with Issa Rae, Lauren Ashley Smith is the head writer, and Thede and Black are on the writing staff.

The sketches in the first episode start with the above scene, where the woman finds a similarly-dressed friend, urging her to run away from the fog, but the friend wants to be all Zen about it. Turns out they’re the skin of a flight attendant who is applying some cocoa butter to her dry arm. In a recurring sketch, which takes place after an “event”, the four women play games like “never have I ever” and generally look like they’re just hanging out, even though we have no idea what the event is. In another sketch, a Temptations-style group called The Boppers tries to keep its lead singer from making its romantic song much dirtier than it was originally intended. In yet another, Thede plays a know-nothing “theorizing” expert starting a Masterclass.

There are lots of lots of guests in the first episode; both Laverne Cox and Angela Bassett, for instance, appear in a sketch about a “bad bitch support group” where the members are tired of keeping up appearances and don’t want to be “ok bitches.” In a sketch where Black plays a secret agent that’s so undercover even her coworkers don’t realize she’s there, we see Gina Torres and Nicole Byer. Kelly Rowland and Yvonne Orji guest in other sketches.

Our Take: We’ve gotten to know the four women of ABLSS pretty well over the years, so we know what they’re capable of. Thede had her own late-night show on BET in 2017, where her lead writer was Smith; Black was a breakout star as a writer and correspondent on Full Frontal With Samantha Bee; and Brunson and Dennis have been in shows like iZombie and Rae’s Insecure.

The four of them have great chemistry together, especially in the scenes where they’re just hanging out talking about whether they’d watch The Naked Gun movies despite the fact that O.J. Simpson is in them. Like all sketch shows, there are some hilarious moments, and others that fall flat, but when the show hits on something, it can generate huge laughs, like during the aforementioned sketch with The Boppers. An inside joke about how Byers and Black get mistaken for each other a lot is also a funny reveal.

We do get why they lean on so many guest stars; with so many sketch shows on the air, guest stars will bring the eyeballs. But then it gives viewers very rare glimpses of ABLSS‘s core four together without any guests. What we hope happens is that as the season goes on, or if the show gets a second season, the guest roster will shrink and the four funny women will be able to shine on their own.

Sex and Skin: Nothing here. Though the core four do talk about what it means when a man has a “Flintstone dick,” which was pretty funny.

Parting Shot: After the credits, there’s a fun outtake reel, where we see Torres do a fine impression of how Arsenio Hall was introduced during his early ’90s talk show.

Sleeper Star: It’s hard to call Bassett a sleeper, but she was pretty funny in the bad bitch sketch, saying things like “There’s nothing wrong with being an OK bitch… as long as you’re not a basic bitch.”

Most Pilot-y Line: Not all sketches are built to recur through an episode, and the “Pre-PhD Hertep Masterclass” one recurred a bit too much.

Our Call: STREAM IT. ABLSS has four funny stars, and a whole lot of guest star power… if you like that sort of thing.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream A Black Lady Sketch Show on HBO