The Beauty of "Queen Sugar"
Friday, September 16, 2016 at 12:12PM 
The televised family drama, free of a truly high concept seem to be dying. The party line would be that watching the inner workings of a family unit—the relational politics and generational issues therein—devoid of something else for the show to be “about” don’t’ capture audiences as easily as those same stories with the overlaid veneer of meth production, mafia ties or a shady family-owned record company. Over the past decade or so we’ve had several shows that have nakedly been about the dynamics of adult siblings in a family unit and very little else, “Brothers and Sisters” and “Parenthood” being two notable examples. Going back even further, even a show like “Six Feet Under” which had the high-concept premise of a family-owned funeral parlor wasn’t explicitly about that as much as it was the lives of the three siblings and the matriarch. We’ve certainly never seen a show of this nature about a non-white family, as it would seem that “black” shows especially need a hook. The shows with black or any non-white characters that get greenlit and see success tend to suggest the perpetuation of the false myth that audiences need to be given a reason for non-white characters in human drama.
Dawn-Lyen Gardener and Rutina Wesley
This long preface serves to highlight how truly rare—both in concept and in beautiful, artful execution—Ava DuVernay’s “Queen Sugar” feels...
