Tuesday Night's Television Lineup Is Chock Full of Amazing Shows That Center Black Stories - Even Two Very Different Ones With Wine At The Center
"On Tuesday night, I think we have the most shows with Black leads, and they're all amazing."
Those are the words of writer and producer Janine Sherman Barrois - and she's 100% right. Barrois has worked on shows like ER and Criminal Minds, and she created TNT's Claws, which just aired its final episode earlier this month - so you can rest assured that this woman knows her TV. And she's not just talking about her own show, Kings of Napa, which airs on Oprah's OWN Network Tuesdays at 8PM - that's one of the many, but she pointed out that there are quite a few others:
"I'm a fan of Grand Crew, I'm a fan of Naomi, Our Kind of People, Queens, all of the shows - there's Abbott Elementary, there's American Auto - it's just a lot!"
Honestly, when Barrois fired off this list during our interview about the Kings of Napa finale - which airs tomorrow at 8PM - we couldn't believe that all these great shows come out on Tuesday night, but she's right, they do! (It's a good thing we live in the age of streaming, otherwise we'd have a real tough coice on our hands when it came to which ones we wanted to watch.)
It's about time that television with Black stories at their center had their time in the sun - and Tuesday night, for whatever reason, seems to be the time to tell them.
And, proving (as we've always known) that Black stories can be as diverse as any others, we now know for a fact that there is space for a story about a Black-owned vineyard AND about a group of Black friends living in LA who love wine - and yes, surprise, they ARE different enough that you'd want to watch them both.
The two shows we're talking about here, specifically, are Grand Crew and Kings of Napa. Kings of Napa, as we've mentioned, is a show about a Black family that owns a vineyard out in Napa, and has to deal with the ups and downs that that brings - it's kind of like Succession, but with more fun drama and fewer entitled boys throwing tantrums. Grand Crew, meanwhile, is an apartment-style comedy similar to New Girl, about a group of Black friends living in LA, who love hanging out at a wine bar and discussing the ups and downs of their lives.
What these shows both have in common, of course, is Black people loving wine - which is why we really wanna see a House of Kings brand wine show up on Grand Crew. Just throw it in there, one episode - and if they end up talking about a Black family owning a vineyard having some drama in the news, I'll be over the moon, because that would be such a cool crossover.
Janine Sherman Barrois agreed with me: "That would be amazing."
You heard it here, NBC: Call Oprah and the OWN network and ask them to send you a bottle!
