In an era in which it is very common to use television fiction to talk about the particularities of the experience of someone “non-white” in their day to day, it is thankfully refreshing that ‘Run the World’ (which premieres today Starzplay) adheres to the core of the long tradition of comedies by single and thirty-year-old friends navigating their work and personal lives.
It is not that the series created by Leigh Davenport ignores these issues, but prefers to bring them up with humor (as when in the middle of a couple’s discussion the subject of slavery comes up without coming to mind) because these women are more than their race and their sex : they are people who like to have fun, have a good professional career and navigate in love.
Sex in New York Harlem
The first impression the series gives is of a strange cross between ‘Sex and the City’ and ‘Insecure’. The first is directly the one offered by the mold. Even the one that we could consider the main character looks like a current version of Carrie Bradshaw: She (Andrea Bordeaux) is a writer / columnist, about to turn 32 years old and has her own “Big” (to that point they are aware of the similarity).
On the other hand, ‘Insecure’, for its part – I confess that when the poster for this series came to me, it gave me an air of Issa Rae and friends – he remembers a good musical selection, his millenial look at this sea of ??sargasso that is to go from his thirty years and his devotion to the setting in which he takes place: the New Yorker Harlem.
However, we cannot ignore that the series has as showrunner Yvette Lee Bowser, creator of ‘Solteras’ (‘Living Single’), an African-American sitcom starring Queen Latifah who also shares certain signs of identity (friends and roommates in Brooklyn) . Along with Bordeaux, the cast is completed by Amber Stevens West, Bresha Webb and Corbin Reid.
With these precedents, ‘Run the World’ sets its tone almost from the first minute being, on the one hand, aware that they are part of an almost ancient tradition and that they have come to play. It does not intend to innovate the genre, but rather focuses on offering an energetic comedy conscious that it is not the first nor will it be the last.
And, the truth is, it works very well: it’s fun, lively and as much as you don’t see yourself too reflected in the life of this (very) well-off and quartet of girls, they gladly invite you to get into their dynamics. Here perhaps we must admit that they cannot avoid the fact that Ella is almost the least interesting character in the group. At least in terms of history. A small imbalance that does not matter due to the cohort of the series.
In short, ‘Run the World’ is a celebratory comedy that achieves a good balance of its ingredients when it comes to showing the heartbreak, vicissitudes and other dramas (of the first world) of these determined women who want to enjoy those little moments of the life. A healthy and honest vindication of the friendship and empowerment that this gives.
