Diversity Looks Like Showtime

Diversity, shmersity.

The big talk in television, following pressure from the media, the NAACP and other lobbying groups, is about entertainment series needing to diversify. In other words, widen the palette to include prominent characters who reflect a rainbow of races and ethnicities.

Although largely eluding network programmers, the logic is persuasive. Mainstream TV claims to mirror the United States. So it should mirror everyone, as the talk goes, not just the nation’s white majority.

Instead of talking, though, Showtime is doing.

While making its mark with an ever-better catalog of original movies, Showtime isn’t in the series business on a par with even UPN or the WB, let alone the vastly larger ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox.

Yet most of the seven series it does have on the air are highly distinctive, to say nothing of well-executed--the best of them being “Beggars and Choosers,” an hourlong comedy-drama about a troubled TV network. It’s a show that keeps getting better and better.

And five of these series, including “Beggars and Choosers,” give prominence to characters of color, a percentage unmatched elsewhere on television.

Depending on the fates of Showtime’s existing series (about which it is keeping silent), that percentage may rise, given its plans to launch two hourlong dramas in 2000, each with a 22-episode commitment, and each focusing on a minority.

The protagonists of “Resurrection Blvd.” are the Santiagos of East Los Angeles, a Latino family “whose quest for the American dream,” Showtime says, “has always tied them to the boxing arena.”

If you’re scratching your head trying to recall the last drama series with predominantly Latino characters, stop scratching. It hasn’t been done within memory.

Showtime’s other new series, based on the 1997 movie that it’s named after, is “Soul Food,” whose African American characters live in Chicago. It will dwell on three loving but combative sisters as they try to maintain family solidarity after the death of their mother.

Quality counts as much as quantity, so where these two fine-sounding series actually land on the TV food chain remains to be seen. In any case, give Showtime credit for continuing to present the diversity of the U.S. population much as it exists (the cable channel’s continued dearth of Asian Americans notwithstanding).

Enough about the future. What about the heterogeneity of today’s Showtime?

The alien Teal’c, a lead character on “Stargate SG-1,” is African American. As is a recurring addict (whose days appear numbered) on “Rude Awakening,” a raucous comedy about a recovering substance abuser.

Two other Showtime series have African Americans in abundance. One is “Linc’s,” an intelligent, urbane comedy set in a black-owned bar. The other is “The Hoop Life,” an hourlong drama about a professional basketball team playing in an NBA-level league known as the UBA, which is almost as predominantly black as the universe it copies.

(Even skillful editing can’t hide the klutziness of the relative shrimps playing superstars in “The Hoop Life,” which also tends to huge overstatement. In Sunday’s episode, for example, the UBA got a kick-butt female referee, leading to a first for TV and possibly professional sports: A ref and a player necking.)

Showtime has devised weird schedules for its series, with “Rude Awakening” not set to resume in first-run until Feb. 19, “Linc’s” taking a first-run break on Jan. 2 and Jan. 9, and no new episodes of “The Hoop Life” showing up until Jan. 16.

The continuity gap is even wider for “Beggars and Choosers,” whose last new episode ran Dec. 11, and won’t resume its first-run season until Feb. 19.

Although beginning last June as monolithically white, it is ever-seductive “Beggars and Choosers,” by the way, that now has one of the juiciest African American characters anywhere. She’s Casey Lenox, a scheming Eve Harrington whose skin color, sugary manner and sweet-voiced claim to be a disadvantaged product of the hood earned her a job as director of comedy development at the fictional LTG network.

Instead, she turned out to be an ambitious Bryn Mar grad plotting to overtake the network’s equally ruthless development chief, Lori Volpone, who saw through Lenox’s innocent act from the start and tried preemptive action. This clash of hissing vipers plays out Feb. 19, with one and then the other gaining an advantage. It’s a wonderful hoot that’s something to behold.

As are these two actresses in one of the best casts in TV. After a string of forgettable roles, Charlotte Ross has finally come into her own as the intense Volpone, and Sherri Saum is her cool equal as Lenox. The elevation of their rivalry has created a heat few series can match.

All of this proving that, when it comes to on-screen diversity, Showtime has earned the right to be TV’s role model.