Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Our Kind Of People’ On Fox, A Soapy Drama About A High-Society Black Community On Martha’s Vineyard

Black wealth has been the topic of a number of shows, from Empire to lots of the shows that Tyler Perry has produced for OWN. But it’s rare to see a soapy series about “old money” Black society, filled with the same strata and unwritten rules as similar white societies do. Our Kind Of People is a new series that shows what happens when a woman with a past in such a community tries to make her way inside of it. Read on for more.

OUR KIND OF PEOPLE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Shots of Oak Bluffs, a town on Martha’s Vineyard. As we see scenes of women in uniforms watering roses and six-digit Mercedes being washed, three women drive towards the island in a convertible.

The Gist: Angela Vaughn (Yaya DeCosta) is in that car with her 17-year-old daughter Nikki (Alana Bright) and her aunt, Patricia Williams (Debbi Morgan). They have come to Oak Bluffs because Angela’s mother left her an old boarding house in her will; it’s the same boarding house where she worked as a maid when Angela was a kid. The goal: Open a pop-up salon that helps promote her line of natural hair care products, which come from her mother’s recipes.

Oak Bluffs has been home to an upper-class Black community for decades, led mostly by two families: The Franklins and the Duponts. The two powerful families are currently joined by the marriage of Leah Franklin-Dupont (Nadine Ellis) and Raymond Dupont (Morris Chestnut). Both are on the board of Franklin Holdings, but Leah reports to her father Teddy (Joe Morton), who has proposed an arena project for the town. Leah tells him she’s on to how he skirts the law to fund his projects, but Teddy just laughs it off, talking about he put his grand conference table on an incline so everyone seated there can look up at him.

Angela is trying to make every effort to make her way into Oak Bluffs society; she starts by seeing if Nikki can befriend the teens in the secret society that they’re members of. At a beginning-of-summer party thrown by the Franklin-Duponts, Nikki is introduced to Leah and Franklin’s kids Quincy (Kyle Barry) and Lauren (Rhyon Nicole Brown), as well as a more friendly girl named Taylor (Nicole Chanel Williams). They invite her to a boat party the next night. Meanwhile, Angela tries to ingratiate herself to Leah, but fails; she does meet a handsome millionaire named Tyrique Chapman (Lance Gross).

This is where the machinations start, especially when Angela gets her friend Josephine (Raven Goodwin) to nominate her for the Graceties society; Leah is about to take over from her mother mother-in-law Olivia (L. Scott Caldwell) as president, and neither of them trust the information about her lineage that Angela has given. But what Angela figures out about just who her father is not only surprises her, but sets up a summer-long struggle with Leah.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? It’s not a surprise that Our Kind Of People has the soapy feel of Empire, considering both shows are produced by Lee Daniels’ production company. But the drama here feels more tied down to the real world, albeit a wealthy one, than Empire‘s does. Think of this as Empire crossed with Big Little Lies.

Our Take: Karin Gist, a veteran writer whose credits date back to Girlfriends, has a handle on the topic she writes about in Our Kind Of People, based on a 1999 nonfiction book of the same name. It’s a take on upper-class Black families that are as “old money” as other families on the Vineyard, and the idea is that the characters have shadings that make them neither heroes nor villains.

In the first episode, Gist is setting up a rivalry between Angela and Leah; Angela knows something about their relationship that Leah doesn’t, and she’s going to use that upper hand to her advantage. So there may be moments where Angela is the “good guy”, especially in defending her late mother’s reputation on the island, but there will be others where her brazen striving is going to rankle viewers.

On the other hand, Leah wants to push Angela as far out of her circle as possible, but she also has to contend with pressure from the corrupt Teddy and the domineering Olivia. She’s there to support Black women and build them up, so when Olivia forces her to confront Angela about her mother at the first Graceties event of the summer, she feels terrible about it. She’d rather tear down her father, which she does the following day.

So there will be shadings to everyone we see, including Nikki and the other teens in town. In fact, the up-and-down relationship Nikki has with Angela will be an interesting aspect of the story; they seem so close as they sit on the beach with their aunt on the way into town, but then by the end of the episode it’s revealed that Angela hasn’t always been there for her and Nikki resents her mother trying to force her into societies she doesn’t want any part of.

Are there some over-the-top moments in the pilot? Sure. Some — like the hairstyles that Angela whipped up at the Graceties event — are a little eye-rolling (though visually stunning). But others are the sign of a soapy show that’s only getting started with outlandish moments rooted in a real history of upper-class Black culture on the Vineyard.

Sex and Skin: Except for Tyrique’s fascination with Angela’s feet, there is actually very little sex in the pilot.

Parting Shot: Angela looks in the mirror and pulls a hair from the wig Leah used in the fashion show; she puts it in a ziploc bag, supposedly to have her DNA tested to see if they are truly half-sisters. “Gotta protect the crown,” she says to herself. “Right, mama?”

Sleeper Star: Debbi Morgan is one of those character actors people know from somewhere — most people probably know her from All My Children. But she’s a strong presence as Angela’s “Aunt Piggy”, and we hope to see her for the entire season.

Most Pilot-y Line: Before Taylor jumped off the boat during the party where Nikki was, she slipped her phone in Nikki’s bag; there is a video of her and Lauren together. When Nikki tells Lauren about it and says that she doesn’t have to hide, Lauren says, “What do you want me to do? Do you want me to go around slapping pronouns on my chest? We don’t get to do that here.” What year is this?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Our Kind Of People is a frothy show with a more serious underlying message about wealth, racism and women supporting each other. If you miss Empire, it should fill that hole in your schedule quite nicely.

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.

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