South Central aired from April until August 1994 on Fox.
South Central Los Angeles was the setting for this remarkably hard-edged comedy-drama ( the series did employ a laugh-track in order to enforce the comedy elements of the series), about a divorced, black-single mother trying to raise her family in a tough inner-city neighborhood. Joan ( Tina Lifford) was adjusting to working for the neighborhood grocery coop after having been laid off from her higher-paying administrative job. Not only did she have to struggle financially, but she was trying to raise her family and protect them from the violence around them. Her older son Marcus , had been killed by neighborhood gang members. Joan had 2 surviving children, Andre ( Laranz Tate), a lazy but well-meaning high school senior whose grades left much to be desired, and Tasha ( ( Tasha Scott), a diligent student who tended to tattle on her older brother. Living with them in her small house was little Dion ( Keith Mbulo), a foster child who never spoke. Andre had become infatuated with Nicole ( Maia Campbell), a sexy girl who worked part-time for Dr. McHenry ( Ken Page), a physician friend of his mother's. Although Nicole liked him, they had difficulty getting together, since her successful parents didn't want their daughter to date someone from the ' hood. Others in the cast were Rashad ( Lamont Bentley), Andre's buddy from school; Sweets ( Paula Kelly), Joan's neighbor and friend ; Bobby ( Clifton Powell), who ran the coop where Joan worked; and Mayo and Lucille ( Earl Billings, Jennifer Lopez), who also worked at the coop.
Critics loved South Central for its realistic portayal of life in the inner city, even if the language was stronger than they would have liked. Avoiding most of the stereotypes of TV sitcoms, these were real people with real problems. Unfortunately the series may have been too depressing to apeal to a mass audience. Despite a campaign to keep it on the air, it was canceled after its initial 13-episode run.
A Review from Variety
South Central
By TONY SCOTT
Powered By Fox, Tues. April 5, 8 p.m.
Cast: Tina Lifford, Larenz Tate, Tasha Scott, Keith Mbulo, Paula Kelly, Clifton Powell, Ken Page, Earl Billings, Terrence McNally, Jennifer Lopez.
Filmed around L.A. by Slick/Mac Prods. and Twentieth TV. Executive producers/writers, Ralph Farquhar, Michael J. Weithorn; producer, William E. Baker; director, Stan Lathan; "South Central," latest sitcom about an urban black family struggling against terrible odds, plays like the summation that finally gets it right.
Straightforward, touchingly human and funny, the series depicts tough breaks laced with hope, and involves people worth pulling for.
Joan Mosely (Tina Lifford), South Central L.A. deserted mother of three, has already lost one son to gangs, and she doesn't want teenage son Andre (Larenz Tate) following that path.
Andre, daughter Tasha (Tasha Scott) and foster son Deion (Keith Mbulo) don't know that Joan was laid off work a month ago and can't find another job -- not exactly a stingingly new plot idea, but one that's worked for all its traditional worth.
Lifford is authoritative but ingratiating, even when she takes her frustrations out on suitor Dr. McHenry (Ken Page). When close friend Sweets (Paula Kelly) offers to help, Joan can take a breather.
Playlet, written adroitly by exec producers Ralph Farquhar and Michael J. Weithorn and ably directed by Stan Lathan, has things to say people will be listening to. Storyline's simple and direct, but Lifford makes Joan a rich study of a near-desperate womanwho won't give up. A scene in a co-op market run by Deavers (Clifton Powell) and cranked up by a checker shows Joan's dilemma and her fortitude.
The pilot's actors, including distinguished Kelly, know what they're about. Sitcom's based on the human condition, not just on one-liners. "South Central," if the signals are right, says honest things without going mawkish about courage , patience and love. It faces an uphill battle but could catch on.
A Review from The New York Times
Critic's Notebook; Beyond Slapstick to Show Perils Faced by Blacks
By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
Published: April 5, 1994
In the 1970's, in a sitcom like "Good Times," a black family struggling to survive in a high-rise Chicago ghetto would somehow always be good for a laugh, especially if the goofy son popped his eyes and shouted "Dy-no-mite!" And in "Chico and the Man," an ingratiating young Hispanic man in East Los Angeles could joke his way into a garage partnership with an elderly white, a harmless fantasy that dribbled to an end when the drug-plagued star of the show, Freddie Prinze, committed suicide. Prime time entertainment's ability to fudge the harsher aspects of reality is boundless.
Today? Where minorities are concerned, specifically blacks and Hispanics, there's no dearth of dopey escapism or broad stereotypes bordering on minstrelsy. But at least occasionally an unusual effort is made to go beyond the standard television props of one-liners and tidy uplift. This week, two very different examples of a new grittiness are on tap: "South-Central," a new comedy drama series starting tonight on Fox Broadcasting, and "Lives in Hazard," a documentary on NBC on Friday night. In each case, the setting is Los Angeles.
The Mosely family in "South-Central" is headed by Joan (Tina Lifford), who after 12 years has lost her job as a schoolteacher and has yet to tell her family: teen-age Andre, or Dre (Larenz Tate); his younger sister, Tasha (Tasha Scott), and little Deion Carter (Keith Mbulo), a foster child. Joan's husband has long since gone and is rarely seen by the children. She has already lost a son to drugs and gangs, and is determined that Andre won't go the same route. Life in South-Central is an unending challenge. When Tasha wakes up and talks about fresh air and "the smell of gunpowder in the morning," she isn't entirely joking.
There are laughs in "South-Central," but they are secondary to a permeating sense of danger and looming disintegration. Determined that she is not going to be anybody's welfare recipient, Joan looks desperately for a job only to come up with a possibility paying $350 a week as opposed to the $525 she had been making. A harrowing new report that 18 percent of full-time workers live below the poverty line is driven home on this series.
Still reeling from the death of her oldest child, Joan tends to get overprotective about the remaining children, often with good reason. She will not allow the words "nigger" or "bitch" to be used in her home, no matter how casually they are tossed around on the streets. And when Andre comes home with a beeper and insists it has nothing to do with drug dealing, Joan is adamant: "Don't play me stupid." Andre is told he is the man of the house but when, in the second episode next week, he does come home with pockets full of money for his jobless mother, Joan explodes. She insists he return the money and tells the drug dealer's unapologetic mother, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
The language is sometimes earthy. The comic moments can be typically sitcom contrived. But "South-Central" has a steady ring of truth, right down to Andre finding the family glued to "Beverly Hills 90210" and making a crack about "watching those uppity white folks again."
Part of a continuing NBC focus on violence, including several new public-service announcements, "Lives in Hazard" was actually made a couple of years ago. The documentary, produced by Susan Todd and Andrew Todd, is narrated by the actor and director Edward James Olmos. It was made as worked on his 1993 feature film "American Me." The scene is East Los Angeles. The intensely emotional Mr. Olmos (on one Oscar telecast he kissed the hand of a startled Max von Sydow, one of his idols) is clearly committed to the project, describing the sad spectacle of children killing children as "an epidemic never seen before on the planet."
The material is by now familiar, but the compilation of wasted lives remains unsettling. Mr. Olmos used a good many Hispanic gang members in his movie. Some were subsequently killed or severely wounded by other gang members or the police. Some ended up in Folsom Prison, where Mr. Olmos was allowed to take his cameras and use real inmates as performers. "It's dangerous in here," says one, "because people got nothing to do but be dangerous."
East Los Angeles is seen as a world where young people, male and female, consider a prison term an ordinary part of growing up. A gang counselor recalls how he "aspired to San Quentin." Warnings about violence are shrugged off with a fatalistic "you got to die sometime." The film ends with a note that one neighborhood woman who figured prominently in both Mr. Olmos's film and this documentary was murdered by members of her own former gang. Prime time, and the rest of us, have come a long way from the cozy reassurances of Chico and the man's garage.
A Review from Entertainment Weekly
TV Review
South Central
--By Ken Tucker
Few sitcoms have been as ambitious and nervy as South Central, a show about a single mother trying to raise her three children in inner-city Los Angeles. Joan Mosley (Tina Lifford) has been unemployed for a month, a fact she's trying to keep from her teenage son, Andre (Larenz Tate); daughter, Tasha (Tasha Scott); and 6-year-old foster son, Deion (Keith Mbulo). Tasha wants money to buy a stylish jacket and gets angry when her mother says no; Joan doesn't have the heart to tell her that she's already bouncing checks at the grocery store. Andre wants an electronic beeper, but his mother forbids it, saying it will only make the LAPD think he's a drug dealer: ''Why don't you just carry a sign saying, 'I'm young, I'm black, I'm stupid; shoot me'?'' Does this sound like a downer? It's not.
South Central, created by Ralph Farquhar (Married With Children) and Michael J. Weithorn (Family Ties), is unusually frank about the problems of the poor and the struggling, and is wise about the complexities of family life. Every role is wonderfully acted. On the basis of one episode, it is impossible to tell whether South Centralwill sustain its delicate tone-this is the only prime-time half-hour that seesaws between riotous hilarity and abject despair-but it deserves the best of luck. A-
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