Please Use the Service Entrance: Why Aren’t There More People of Color in Period TV Shows?

I’m a TV guy. I’m a HUGE TV guy. A snob really. I don’t fuck around with reality TV or anything with “The Real…” in its title. I don’t do TV shows that read like sequels (ie Big Brother 26). It takes an act of God to get me to watch a network drama. In short, this is not a game. If you too are at all into TV, you know the hottest thing over the last decade of drama (outside of the morally ambiguous white male protagonist) is the period-piece drama. You know the type, the program where it shows us the good ole-fucked up days of America’s growth whether it be the thirties prohibition, or pre-war high-class Britain or upstate New York in the sixties at an advertising firm. About 3 or 4 of these shows pop up every year and at least one of them is cataloged as a hit or at least something that will get renewed for a few more seasons. A couple of years ago it was Masters of Sex. This year, it was Halt and Catch Fire. I was on holiday with my wife (like how I just flipped to Downton Abbey verbiage just now), as we watched The Knick make its debut for Cinemax (though we watched the special viewing on HBO). Steven Soderbergh mastered the direction in this first episode, the costume and set seemed so authentic for New York at the dawn of the 20th century and one of my favorite actors, Clive Owen was magnificent. I was watching the pilot episode of what I knew was going to be an expertly made show. And I was done with it for forever, five minutes before the credits dropped.

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