Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Run The World’ On Starz, About Four Friends In Harlem Who Want To Do What The Title Says

Twenty-eight years ago — yes, that number is correct — Yvette Lee Bowser created Living Single, the “hangout show” that proved to be a model for shows to come for the next decade… including Friends and Sex And The City. Leigh Davenport has Bowser on board as an EP of her update to that formula, Run The World. Is a show that’s more or less a Black SATC something that can be fresh and new?

RUN THE WORLD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Shots of Harlem at night. At the Red Rooster, four friends toast toast and down shots.

The Gist: After a night of drinking and dancing, Ella McFair (Andrea Bordeaux) wakes up late for her first day as a staff writer at an entertainment website. Whitney Greene (Amber Stevens West) is on her Peleton,. Renee Ross (Bresha Webb) is at a bodega getting a hangover egg and cheese sandwich and berating a white woman who thinks nothing to get in her space; she unleashes some Phenomenal Woman verse from Maya Angelou to let the woman know she’s there.

And Sondi Wright (Corbin Reid) is having sex with her boyfriend Matthew Powell (Stephen Bishop) when his six-year-old daughter Amare (Ellie Reine) knocks on the door. Sondi has bonded with Amare since she started dating Matthew, something he is enjoying; she even buys her brown ballet shoes for her class.

When she takes her to the class and goes to sign her up for the next level of class, the instructor assumes Amare is underprivileged and tells Sondi she’ll have to follow some nutritional guidelines because of her ethnicity’s body type. Sondi immediately pulls Amare out of the school, mortifying her and leading Matthew to telling her she overstepped and should grow up. Sondi turns around and says “I spend my days taking care of your ass and some other chick’s child. That’s as grown up as it gets for me.” It doesn’t help that he’s her thesis advisor.

Ella’s working at the website because her last book, written two years ago, failed to find an audience and she needs the work. Her new boss Barb (Erika Alexander) assigns her to a “Legends Party” held by rapper Soulja Boy. Ella thinks the assignment is beneath her, but Barb thinks she’ll kill it. She brings Whitney and Renee to the club, and she’s shocked to see that Soulja Boy’s bodyguards won’t let her or her friends into the VIP section because they’re too old.

Meantime, Whitney, who is stressing over her wedding to Olabisi ‘Ola’ Adeyemo (Tosin Morohunfola), its ever-expanding wedding guest list and the fact that branzino might be on the menu, ends up flirting with and sleeping with a guy at the club who has slept with just about everyone else in their friend group at one time or another.

After seeing her old flame Anderson Louis (Nick Sagar) at the club, back in the US after a time overseas, Ella sleeps with Brian (James Chen), who helped her get into the VIP section, but he can’t get it up due to “whiskey dick”. So she goes to Sondi’s apartment and files a blog entry about how Soulja Boy is practicing age discrimination at his shows.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Run The World shares a lot of story DNA with Sex And The City. In fact, SATC is mentioned when Sondi equates Anderson as Ella’s “Mr. Big”.

Our Take: Leigh Davenport (Boomerang) created and wrote Run The World (Yvette Lee Bowser is one of the executive producers), and the first episode does a good job of introducing us to these four friends, their complicated lives, and their desire to be incredible in whatever they decide to pursue.

The plotting of the first episode, as well as the season, seems to be loose; there are going to be incidents where the friends support each other, maybe tell each other some harsh truths, and also encounter bumps on the road to “ruling the world”. We have yet to see a lot of Whitney’s work and wedding-planning difficulties in depth, and we see none of the inner life of Renee, the only one of the four who is married. All of that will come eventually, but Run The World feels more like a hangout show than a show with some sort of monumental arc of a storyline.

And that’s just fine, mainly because the four leads are so appealing. They each scratch a different character itch, and none of them are portrayed in a way that anyone can think of as stereotypical.

We mentioned Bowser above because she created Living Single, the uber example of a hangout show with four modern Black women and their complicated love lives. Much of that — in updated form — as well as shows like SATC and Girlfriends can be seen in Run The World; Alexander’s presence as Barb feels like a nod to Bowser’s signature show. Things lean towards SATC explicitness mainly because of the show’s cable home. But Run The World owes all of its predecessors a tip of the hat.

Sex and Skin: The most explicit sex scene is between Sondi and Matthew. But there’s a whole lot of sex going on in the first episode.

Parting Shot: After sleeping with the mimbo she met at the club, Whitney smiles then gets the “Oh, shit, what did I just do?” look on her face.

Sleeper Star: Stephen Bishop has the thankless task of playing Matthew as a bit of a jerk, given how he’s sleeping with one of his grad students and has no problem with Sondi bonding and acting like a mother to Amare.

Most Pilot-y Line: Whitney’s rant about branzino feels like it comes from another, less sophisticated show. It tries to establish her character as super-woke but we’re not sure if it’s her being woke or just wound too tight.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Run The World proves that a TV formula can be repeated if the characters and actors are appealing and the writing starts to create worlds around them that are start to stand out on their own. After the first episode, the show is on its way to doing just that.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Run The World On Starz.com