Summary
It isn’t exactly high art, but Tyler Perry’s She the People is at least deliberately funny instead of accidentally funny, and on that level, it is a lot easier to take seriously than his more ridiculous dramatic fare.
Everything Tyler Perry does is funny, usually for entirely the wrong reasons. On that level, at least, She the People feels like a step in the right direction. This 16-episode Netflix dramedy — released in two eight-episode parts, as with the execrable Beauty in Black, which has now hopefully ended — is at least trying to be funny, which ironically makes it a lot easier to take seriously than Perry’s earnest efforts to be serious.
This is Perry’s first comedy series for Netflix, and the second under his multi-year first-look creative partnership with the streaming service, but the man behind Madea isn’t a stranger to the genre, however loosely it might sometimes apply to his output. And I think you can tell. She the People is just a lighter, more likable show than his typical claptrap, and even though it occasionally runs the risk of feeling frivolous thanks to an overblown cartoonish vibe that can minimize real issues, at least it isn’t fundamentally embarrassing.
Terri J. Vaughn tops the bill as Antoinette Dunkerson, who wins her campaign for Lieutenant Governor and discovers immediately — as if it wasn’t obvious already — that politics is a bit of a rigged game. Most of Antoinette’s opposition comes from Robert Craighead’s Governor Irwin Harper, a white politician so old-school that he’s often just flat-out racist. He cuts a ridiculous figure, but he’s an idea more than a character, the concept of tired white male Republican hegemony given flesh.
But because this is a comedy, Antoinette also has another problem in the form of her eccentric family, and increasingly throughout the first eight episodes — perhaps especially in the Part 1 finale — the needs of her career clash violently with the needs of her loved ones. You’ll recognise the vast majority of Antoinette’s family, friends, and colleagues from other Tyler Perry projects, which is always the case, but as with the series overall, they’re put to better use by the more arch, comedic tone.
Terri J. Vaughn in She the People | Image via Netflix
And I honestly can’t help but like it. I’m as surprised as you are, but the comedy mostly works, and the sociopolitical commentary is more palatable in this slapstick-y form where you don’t feel preached to, and the talking points aren’t devalued by constantly being indulged in. Alongside Perry, who has writing, directing, and producing credits, She the People benefits from the inclusion of the former mayor of Atlanta and adviser to President Biden, Keisha Lance Bottoms, who serves as an executive producer and — presumably, anyway — someone who can keep Perry’s worst creative impulses in check.
Political issues and accuracy notwithstanding, though, this doesn’t feel like a political drama. It has the knockabout sensibilities of a family sitcom underscored by real commentary, which is probably the right way around to do it, and playing into the cast’s talents this way is ultimately beneficial to the entire production. She the People offers something a bit fresh and different from the lurid crime/legal thrillers Perry has been indulging in of late, and for that, at least, it should be commended.
Don’t get me wrong — there’s no high art to be found here. But if you’re looking to Tyler Perry for that, more fool you. At the very least, it’s a worthwhile offering with some decent jokes and valuable underlying ideas that gets the balance and tone about right, making for a lightweight binge that isn’t actively off-putting. By Perry’s standards, that’s great progress.
