The Viola Davis-Backed, Racism-Battling Detective Sitcom You Need to Be Watching
LatestWhen a show opens up with a black woman explaining to an Asian woman (played by Margaret Cho) how to take care of her Nigerian-adopted daughter’s 4C hair, you know something special is going on.
Meet American Koko, a web series—produced by Viola Davis and streaming on ABC’s digital platform—about a woman who literally solves America’s race issues as a member of the Everybody’s a Little Bit Racist Agency. The “Lost Angeles”-based agency consists of two black people, a Jewish man, and a Chinese woman who operate under the rather wordy motto: “We are not fucking around until we solve America’s race problems one case at a fucking time!”
Series creator Diarra Kilpatrick (an award-winning actress who is currently developing another series, The Climb, for Amazon) originally wrote, directed, and produced the web series back in 2014. After winning Best Web Series Award at the American Black Film Festival in 2015, ABCd picked up the series in 2016, and Viola Davis and husband Julius Tennon stepped in to produce through JuVee Productions.
Yesterday, ABCd launched the second season of the show, along with a reshoot of the first season (updating it to suit a post-2016 election world).
The show is biting, hilarious, and while some of the first season’s humor can feel very 2014 with riffs on the tightness of white dudes’ pants, American Koko is exactly what America needs right now. Like Olivia Pope but for our country’s racial crisis! You can find both seasons on ABCd.