I have never seen a show like "Lovecraft Country" before. It's a genre program that is very aware of its status as a genre program, full of the occult, ghosts, magic, demons, and time travel. However, it is also very deliberately a story about African-Americans inhabiting roles within those genre stories that are usually reserved for white protagonists. There's a ton of pointed commentary about the history of African-American oppression, and the show often contrasts the supernatural monsters with the even more frightening monsters of real life racism and bigotry.
Taking place in the 1950s, we follow Tic Freeman (Jonathan Majors), recently returned to Chicago from the Korean War, his Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance), and Tic's childhood friend Leti (Jurnee Smollett) as they take a cross country road trip into hostile areas where Jim Crow laws are still in effect. They discover that Tic has a mysterious heritage connected to a group of cultists, including the sinister Christina Braithwaite (Abbey Lee) and her minion William (Jordan Patrick Smith). This sparks a series of adventures that affect all of Tic's family and friends. Each episode highlights different characters, including George's wife Hippolyta (Aunjanue Ellis), and daughter Diana (Jada Harris), Leti's sister Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku), Tic's long estranged father Montrose (Michael K. Williams), and Ji-Ah (Jamie Chung), a Korean nurse Tic met during the war.
There's a season-long storyline about Tic and Leti trying to learn more about magic and the Braithwaites, culminating in a big final standoff. However, that's probably the least interesting part of the show. "Lovecraft Country" functions as an anthology of different kinds of genre stories. One episode features a haunted house, another is a body horror romance, one is a cosmic adventure, and one involves time travel. The creators prove to be wildly ambitious and never afraid of taking big swings. Sometimes the show falls on its face. Sometimes the results are only so-so However, roughly half of the episodes are flat-out fantastic television, a potent combination of genre tropes, unblinking examination of the history of American prejudice, and some deep dives into the scarred psyche of Black America. There is nothing subtle about this, with the repeated use of anachronistic music, civil rights speeches, or even snippets of interviews paired with the action. We get loads of references to figures from Black history of the era, including cameos from Jackie Robinson, Emmett Till, and Josephine Baker. A rousing version of "Sinnerman," sung by Alice Smith, plays over the closing credits.
The show was developed by Misha Green, based on a novel by Matt Ruff. H.P. Lovecraft fans may be disappointed to find that Lovecraft's work has little to do with the series directly. Instead, "Lovecraft Country" borrows elements from his works, including some of the famous monsters, to tell its own story, subverting some of Lovecraft's notoriously racist narratives in the process. And thanks to the involvement of HBO, the series looks absolutely gorgeous, and can be as R-rated as it wants. There's a lot of beautiful gore in this show, healthy amounts of sex, and very out-of-this world imagery. The cast is stellar, with Jurnee Smollett standing out as the fiery Leti. It's so heartening to see major resources being committed to a show like this, which is vehemently about the Black experience on its own terms. It's not afraid of being too angry or too aggressive in its views, and it's wonderful.
The anthology format does make for a rather disjointed season, and occasionally the creators bite off far more than they can chew, cramming too many concepts and characters into too little time. The show raises the issues of the black LGBT experience, and colorism, for instance, but doesn't really have the time to explore them in much depth. I'm glad that Ji-Ah was part of the show, but outside of her spotlight episode she's an odd presence in the story. Nonetheless, there is so much passion and so much wild creativity on the screen, and the themes are so potent, when the material does work, it's magic. It's my sincere hope that "Lovecraft Country" doesn't end up being a fluke, and we get more media in this vein for years to come.
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