Last Monday`s debut of ”Gideon Oliver,” and the recent addition of ”A Man Called Hawk,” both on ABC, marked only the seventh and eighth prime-time television dramatic series with a black actor as the lead-ever.
Black performers can point to a string of comedy successes. In its fifth season, NBC`s ”The Cosby Show” is the nation`s most popular series. Three other NBC sitcoms with predominantly black casts-”A Different World,”
”227” and ”Amen”-regularly finish among the 25 most-watched programs in the weekly Nielsen ratings.
Those programs continue a trend begun in the early 1970s, with long-running comedies such as ”Sanford and Son,” ”Good Times” and ”The Jeffersons.”
But if comedies have been hospitable to black performers, drama series have been cruel. No drama with a black lead-”Shaft,” ”Get Christie Love,” ”Paris”-has run longer than a single season. Most have been canceled within weeks of their debut.
In a medium as conservative as television, where an episode of a one-hour show costs more than $1 million, that kind of track record makes it difficult for black performers to get a crack at starring dramatic roles. That`s why there`s industry-wide interest in the success or failure of these two new shows.
”I`ve been in the business long enough to know that there`s a perception that, if it hasn`t worked in the past, it won`t work in the future,” said Bill Yates, executive producer of ”A Man Called Hawk.” ”If we looked back at those programs (that failed), they may have had a bad time slot or a poor lead-in program. Or they could have been bad shows.”
”A Man Called Hawk,” which airs at 8 p.m. Saturdays on ABC-Ch. 7, is a spin-off of ”Spenser: For Hire,” starring Avery Brooks as an enigmatic hero who speaks softly but is plenty tough. It`s filmed on location in Washington. ”In the motion picture field, there are black actors who are huge successes,” Yates said, referring to Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor. ”That accessibility is there, but it hasn`t found its way onto television. Maybe
`Hawk` will be that show.”
Dick Wolf is the executive producer of ”Gideon Oliver,” which premiered at 8 p.m. Monday on ABC-Ch. 7, where it will air every third week as part of a rotating series. Louis Gossett Jr., who won an Oscar for his portrayal of a Marine drill instructor in ”An Officer and a Gentleman,” stars as the title character, a professor of cultural anthropology.
”For better or worse, television is a reflective medium,” Wolf said.
”Unfortunately, the reflection takes about five years to hit the small screen in terms of the attitudes of the country and the values that are portrayed.”
Some believe television dramas don`t reflect many minority viewpoints because most network and production company executives are white males. So are most writers, producers and directors.
”In the old days, we talked about the sun revolving around the earth,”
Rodney Coates, an assistant professor of sociology at UNC Charlotte, said.
”On television, the social universe revolves around white males. What that means for everyone who is not a white male is they become these strange little caricatures. . . . It totally springs from a lack of real, in-depth contact with individuals of other races. Drama is an attempt to reflect reality, but if your reality is circumscribed, then your reflection of that reality must also be circumscribed.”
J. Fred MacDonald, author of four books on television, including ”Blacks and White TV,” agreed. ”It`s all white men who run it. And they assume that the white audience is the great majority and that nobody will be particularly interested in the inner dynamics of a black family or the story of a black brain surgeon.”
MacDonald, a professor of history at Northeastern Illinois University, is the curator of the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago. In 1983, he testified before a U. S. Senate subcommittee as an expert witness on minorities on television.
”Is it a problem with the viewers or the programmers? I`d go on record as saying it is the programmers,” MacDonald said. ”You have to go back and try again and again and again. The audience hasn`t had much chance to reject blacks in dramatic roles.”
Another argument is that the disparity between successful comedies and failed dramas reflects a subtle but inherent form of racism: Black
entertainers first found fame as comics, singers, musicians and dancers; white audiences are still most comfortable with those roles.
”There`s a tradition that when blacks appear, it`s in a comedy,”
MacDonald said.
”It goes back to the old days of radio . . . the old minstrel roles that were invariably white guys putting on black voices. I read an interview with Johnny Lee, who played Calhoun on the television version of `Amos `n` Andy,`
and he said he had to be taught by a white vocal coach to mimic the exaggerated black dialect from the radio show.”
Robert Thompson, an assistant professor of sociology at the State University of New York in Cortland, said blacks have found easier entry into comedies because comedy is considered less important than drama.
”There`s a real difference between drama and comedy in our culture,”
said Thompson, who also is director of the Radio/Television/Film Summer Institute at Northwestern University and the author of two books on television. ”Everyone knows instinctively that drama is more important than comedy. Compare how people feel about `Macbeth` compared to `A Midsummer`s Night Dream.` Most people would say `Macbeth` is a greater work . . . . That`s the way our society views it.”
After the success of ”Roots,” the ABC miniseries that aired to critical and popular acclaim in 1977 and 1978, there were hopes that at least some of its black stars would find success in weekly dramas. It didn`t happen.
ABC and the producers of ”A Man Called Hawk” and ”Gideon Oliver” are gambling that the times have changed enough for their shows to be successful. ”The ratings the first few weeks have been very good,” said Yates of
”A Man Called Hawk.” ”If the public has said anything to us about the acceptability of what we`re doing, it`s been approval.”
Wolf of ”Gideon Oliver” noted, ”I have to be honest . . . I think with Lou Gossett, it`s as close to fail-safe as you can possibly get. If the show doesn`t work, there can be 150 reasons why it doesn`t work, but nobody is going to blame it on Lou . . . people would still be standing in line to hire him.”
But if ”A Man Called Hawk” and ”Gideon Oliver” fail (and both received mostly lukewarm critical reviews), it may be even tougher for blacks to get dramatic series leads.
”If these two shows are miserable failures, the typical network reductionist attitude is going to be that black males can`t carry a drama,”
said Thompson of the State University of New York. ”I think if they succeed, we`ll see more.”
