ABC’s black-ish, about a father (Anthony Anderson) who is worried his now affluent family isn’t “black” enough, premieres Sept. 24 at 9:30 p.m. following comedy anchor Modern Family. Anderson, Laurence Fishburne, who also plays the main character’s father, and creator Kenya Barris all executive produce the sitcom. The following are reviews from TV critics around the web, compiled by B&C.
“It’s all gentle as can be. Black-ish may be full of racial themes, but it’s working a gimmick that transcends race: Dad as buffoon.”
—Neil Genzlinger,The New York Times
“Black-ish becomes something more complicated–about wanting to find that place where you’re not defined by your race, yet your culture doesn’t become irrelevant.”
—James Poniewozik,Time
“It's a show about shifting cultural identities in a mass-market world that has appropriated that identity ... to sell stuff.”
—Verne Gay,Newsday
“It's saying, ‘If you're not white, here is the kind of stuff you have to contend with every day,’ but it's presenting it in a familiar and collegial way, with the tone of a comedian saying, ‘Don't you hate it when …?’”
—Matt Zoller Seitz, Vulture
“Black-ish broadly speaks to a fertile topic regarding minority communities — the fear that greater assimilation to embrace a non-ethnic mainstream comes at a price. Yet in the pilot, the writing hews toward the obvious and predictable, perhaps in part because it’s racing along to establish the premise.”
—Brian Lowry, Variety
“Even in a better season, ABC's provocative and very funny Black-ish would stand out for its broad and biting satire of an uneasily post racial society seen through a very modern-family prism.”
—Matt Roush,TV Guide
