The Big Cigar - A Fuga

This show is brilliant. It has all the great elements in terms of events (action, romance, suspense); above that, it's brilliantly written (you can tell that from the dialogues), and it's reasonably historically accurate - in any case, in terms of highlighting the Black Panthers. This show does justice to history.

Why does it have such bad reviews?? Beats me. Is it too smart? That's a possibility - most series are mindless nowhere stories, while this actually has a point, and historical background. Is it because most of the people reviewing it can't cope with the facts that a poor minority was actually more progressive and accomplished more things than the majority what conspired against it? Maybe Americans just still aren't ready to accept all the messed up stuff their country / government / nation / etc. Did.

In any case, this show is absolutely fantastic, and it puts the finger right where the booboo's at. As far as I'm concerned, I'm recommending it to everyone, and I'm sure it will get more recognition in the future.

On June 14th AppleTV+ released the finale of its 6-episode docudrama about one of the Black Panther Party's founding members, Huey P. Newton. The series is based on a book by Joshuah Bearman and was produced by Don Cheadle who even directed a couple episodes. The show follows Newton as escapes to exile in Cuba with the help of some film producers under guise of making a major motion picture titled The Big Cigar. The premise of the series seemed cool, and I was excited to learn more about the Black Panther Party.

To put it plainly, this was a perfectly forgettable series. It wasn't bad but it wasn't great either. I felt that the acting was good, especially by P. J. Byrne who I felt stole the show as one of the movie producers, and it was cool to learn about this piece of history. Unfortunately, I found the show as a whole to be on the boring side and gave it an overall rating of 6/10.

Shouldn't have been a show it should've been a movie. There are some nice actors in there. The story is interesting, but not as good as you would hope it would be but it's entertaining for if you do not have anything else to watch that's why it is ranked almost as low as the top 20 on Apple TV there's other shows that aren't even on anymore and it's even beating it. It doesn't seem like it's close to the history. The history is vague, not a lot of people will understand this show because it's not popular history and I think they should've done a better way of showing off the black panthers and their movement instead of making this over the top movie of a movie.

A brilliant performance by Andre Holland. This is one of the best true stories I'd never heard before. Highly entertaining. Fast paced. Thought provoking. Don Cheadle brings all the 70s style and flair. The soundtrack is 10/10. It's an in depth, nuanced, unique portrayal of a revolutionary in crisis, at a crossroads, a complicated often misunderstood man grappling with his choices, his direction. Something we rarely see. The love story between Gwen and Huey is deep and emotional, highlighting the impact of women in the party. And if nothing else, it's an incredibly fun thing to binge. Strongly recommend. Don't miss out!

It's a really good show and more importantly, it's a perfect example of how inclusion SHOULD be done in Hollywood. You want more African American actors in the market; you don't do it lazily by (for example) turning Snow White or Cleopatra into a black person, no, you create a completely new character or make a movie about a famous/important real black person. It's not that complicated! "The Burial" is another good example of how the audience is not rejecting inclusion; the audience is rejecting FORCED and LAZY inclusion. Back to this series though, it was a great history class about the life of Huey Newton and his party. I knew nothing about the man or the party and can't pretend that I've been too curious about it in the past so the fact that it managed to make me binge watch it is impressive. On top of it all, I'm a professional hater! I'm hard to impress when it comes to TV shows! Chapeau!