Michael DeLorenzo calls the hungry young boxer he plays in the new Showtime series “Resurrection Blvd.” one of those “classic tragic heroes.”
Nicole Ari Parker feels that when viewers watch the principals in her new Showtime series “Soul Food,” they won’t be able to resist being sucked in.
A character on one show is a traditional flawed champion. Several characters on another series are recognizable to mostly anyone who tunes in.
If both “Soul Food” and “Resurrection Blvd.” are to be successful, they will have to maintain those and other aspects that are universal to all. That’s because “Soul Food’s” cast is made up of African-Americans, while “Resurrection Blvd.” follows a multigenerational Latino family.
“It’s dealing with real, universal issues that people can relate to no matter if you’re white, black, Hispanic, Asian, whatever,” says Tracey Edmonds, an executive producer of “Soul Food.”
“Resurrection Blvd.” creator Dennis Leoni has designed his show to be for “everyone.”
“The characters are culturally specific,” he says, “but the stories are not. They are universally themed, and I’m hoping that everyone and anyone will be able to relate to them, and the human drama that exists. And that people will be able to see that Latinos are like everyone else.”
“Resurrection Blvd.” premieres Monday at 9 p.m. on Showtime. The title refers to the street where the Santiago family of East Los Angeles lives. They are a group of Mexican-Americans for whom boxing has been a way of life for generations.
“Soul Food,” meanwhile, is a spinoff of the popular 1997 feature film about a large Chicago family. It premieres Wednesday at 9 p.m. on Showtime, and while it doesn’t feature actors from the movie, the same people behind the film produce the series.
“Everybody asks me, `Well, how is this show different than other African-American shows,’ and I really had to struggle with that, because a show is a show, whether it’s either good or bad or not this or not that,” says Parker, who plays career-minded Teri Joseph.
“The thing that really makes the show is an intimacy that really is just powerful . . . people kissing, and married couples making love, and dating, just all the little real nooks and crannies that go on.”
While both series have 22-episode commitments from Showtime, “Resurrection Blvd.” may have the hardest way to go. “Soul Food” is a known commodity, derived from a hit film.
And although they’ve been few and far between, there have been other dramas featuring African-American characters.
But “Resurrection” is the first drama with an all-Latino cast. Leoni, who notes between 75 and 80 percent of the production crew that worked on the premiere episode were also Latino, says it is a milagro, or miracle, that his show is even on the air.
If the perception in Hollywood is TV dramas starring blacks don’t do well, then it could be doubly hard for a drama featuring actors who are of Cuban, Puerto Rican and other Latino descents.
“I do feel a little pressure,” the Latino producer-writer says. “I am so caught up in the day-to-day of just trying to make a quality show that I try not to focus on that. But I do know that a lot of people out there are feeling, hoping, that `Resurrection Blvd.’ is the show that will break through and finally allow us to have a show of this kind.”
Leoni, who has written for “The Commish,” “McKenna” and “Covington Cross,” is well aware how much is riding on “Resurrection Blvd.,” just as Edmonds, who executive-produced “Soul Food” with her husband, recording star Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, knows the same holds true for her show.
Another drama with a minority cast, CBS’ “City of Angels,” made it to a second season, but if it hadn’t been renewed, it would have added credence to the notion that general audiences can’t relate to dramas that look at the lives of minorities.
As both Leoni and Edmonds have said, however, their shows will not only deal with issues that most people have dealt with, but they’re also shows about families, which everyone with a family can relate to.
“The main thing to me is these characters, although they may be from East L.A., they have dreams and hopes and desires, just like everybody else,” DeLorenzo says.
But Leoni frankly can’t help but chafe over the inequality that exists in Hollywood:
“I think that when the networks develop hundreds of scripts a year, and the vast majority of them fail, for them it is irresponsible to say they can do one show and have that show fail, and then say that type of show doesn’t work,” Leoni says.
“What about the 93 percent of Anglo shows they develop that went in the toilet faster than they can possibly imagine? So it’s really not right every few years one drama focused on an ethnic group will come out and if it fails, then all of a sudden it’s, `Well, you see, it doesn’t work.’ We get one shot in a hundred, and they get 99 shots out of a hundred. They’re very poor odds.”
The odds are a little better for both shows than they were for “City of Angels,” because they’re on cable, which has a better track record for nurturing minority-cast series than network television. Added to that was the NAACP’s raising a ruckus last season for the lack of faces of color on TV, which had positive results.
“I think it’s a good time for us,” Edmonds says, “because there are so many eyes and there’s so much attention that now being brought on the lack of diversity in television programming.
“So it’s just up to all of us who are producers to make sure that the shows are there quality-wise.”
