Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Harlem’ On Amazon Prime Video, Where Four Friends Figure Out Love And Life In Their 30s

If it feels like the headline we used to describe Harlem sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve used similar headlines for shows that are about four friends who have been tight forever and commiserate with each other about their sex lives and other topics. But just because Harlem is similar to other shows we’ve seen over the past couple of decades doesn’t mean it can’t stand on its own.

HARLEM: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A castle in the Himalayans. A voice says, “High above the Himalayas, there is a tribe of people called the Mosuo, living in what has been named the Kingdom of Women.”

The Gist: The voice is Camille (Meagan Good), an adjunct professor at Columbia, giving a lecture about a tribe where the women call the shots in relationships, moving on from one man to another when they get bored. She gives her class an assignment to live like the Mosuo for a few days and write about the experience. In other words, men let women in their lives take the lead and women grab the reins of their relationships. One of her students, Malik (Ashlee Brian) wants her to take the reins, but she expressly tells him that she can’t date students.

Her boss, Robin Goodman (Andrea Martin), has been lobbying for her to get a full-time position. When she gets together with her buddies from college — Quinn (Grace Byers), Angie (Shoniqua Shandai) and Tye (Jerrie Johnson) — they’re just fascinated with the student that’s hitting on her. It’s been four years since she split up with Ian (Tyler Lepley) as he went off to cooking school, and she’s been thinking about him a lot lately. As it is, she hasn’t dated since then.

The other three, of course, are dealing with their own things. Perpetually single Quinn, who has a massive apartment and a struggling clothing design company who donates revenue to homeless programs, is excited to find a Tinder date with a lawyer… on Long Island. Angie is crashing with Quinn; she has no problem catching dick, but her issue is that she’s been out of work trying to find a singing gig that’s better than a Sheraton lounge. Quinn gets impatient with her friend, who ends up calling her “bougie” before Quinn goes on her Long Island date.

Tye, on the other hand, is doing great at work, rejecting a lowball offer for her queer dating app from an old white dude who’s suit screams 1987. But she’s getting tired of dating the same old young Instagram influencers who are all flash and no substance. She meets an investment banker named Shayla (Claudia Logan) who is another “masc”, and she finds out quickly what it’s like when she’s not the person in charge.

Camille is knocked for a loop when she sees Ian in her neighborhood. Now that he’s back, she needs to hide from him in order to not have “that conversation” with him, given that she has no idea where it’ll go. She decides to call Malik over for a booty call, but his first move turns her right off. Meanwhile, Quinn gets stuck on Long Island when her date bails and her purse gets stolen. Who is the first person she manages to call to get her home? Angie, of course.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Sex And The City, Girlfriends, Insecure, Twenties, Run The World and probably a half-dozen other shows about strong women friendships and their struggle to grab the power in their relationships.

Our Take: Harlem, created by Tracy Oliver (Girls Trip) with Amy Poehler and Pharrell Williams among the executive producers, doesn’t particularly tread new ground. Four friends, all successful, in their late-20s to mid-30s, are all trying to figure out how to navigate being single in a big city, where it seems good dates are hard to find, has been done many, many times (see above).

So where Harlem is going to succeed or fail is with the writing and the cast. And it definitely succeeds on both counts. The four leads are veteran acting presences, and they completely inhabit each character’s skin. Byers and Good are especially compelling as Grace and Camille; both are confident but also display their insecurities on their sleeves, especially when it comes to finding that special relationship.

While we liked the performances of Shandai and Johnson as Angie and Tye, both characters are more shallowly sketched, at least at first. Both are more interested in sex than relationships, just one happens to be straight and the other gay. That’s all well and good, but we were more interested in Angie pushing to get her singing career on the right track and Tye’s confidence that she can grow her business on her own.

But the writing is genuinely funny, even if we get some cliched stories like Camille pining after the one that got away. At a certain point, you just have to let go of the notion that you’ve seen all of this before and just enjoy the characters and situations.

Sex and Skin: The series isn’t shy about showing both nudity and soft-core sex; for instance, we don’t get an implied view of Tye’s head between Shayla’s legs, we actually see it.

Parting Shot: Camille sees Ian at Angie’s open mic night, approaches him when his back is turned, and reaches out to tap him on the shoulder.

Sleeper Star: This is a good spot to mention the fantastic guest stars the show will have, like Jasmine Guy playing Quinn’s demanding mother and Whoopi Goldberg as Camille’s department head at Columbia.

Most Pilot-y Line: Angie’s talk about the butthole being “dick adjacent” was a bit much.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Harlem may feel like a show that you’ve seen before, but the four stars are more than charming enough, and the writing is clever enough, to make the show stand on its own.

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 Harlem On Prime Video