Wyatt Cenac's Problem Areas

Smart, funny, and informative like Last Week Tonight (Jon Oliver is a producer on this) but with its own style and tone. I'll definitely be back for more.

So informative on literally all aspects of policing, providing potential solutions from a panel of experts and activists. He's also very clever and likable. So bummed to see how uncomfortable this made people.

Uncancel this show.



No? Okay then I'll continue. Wyatt's two season HBO docuseries is like the holy grail of formats for me - being a semi-sarcastic, searingly investigative and wholly constructive look at pragmatic solutions to societal problems. The first season is dedicated to policing (which turned out to be quite prescient and is hardly going to get less relevant as time goes by) and the second education. There's a notable attempt to be more overtly comedic in the second season as well, which is welcome but didn't help it much. The overall vibe is all wood-pannelling, gentle flute musical interludes and the perpetually laconic Cenac who seems to have an easy rapport with everyone he talks to.

I can see why the thing didn't necessarily take off - but it felt so specifically crafted for me that frankly I can't quite believe it exists in the first place. I learned a huge amount from this - it can be easy to see the US from the outside mainly negatively but in going and talking to the empathetic passionate people on the ground, educators, activists, craftspeople - and doing it in a warm and slightly silly way the show opened a whole other side of that country up for me. It's sad that the show has gone, but that the humans it highlighted persevere somewhere is a lovely thought.

This show is delightful and heartbreaking. I dare say that these reviews declaring this show boring must be written by some boring-ass people (or, I don't know-by a bunch of sore-sport cops?). Wyatt Cenac is a joy to behold, to laugh with, to cry with, all of it. Problem Areas is nuanced & informative without being preachy or oversimplified; it's stylistically engaging & original; it deftly balances feeling comfortably conversational & endearingly nostalgic while digging in on critically important & most-often maddening issues, keeping it just breezy enough to entertain us along the way to ever more righteous rage. Policing in America c. 2018 cannot EVER be questioned too much-because it's a multilayered convoluted freaking atrocity, people-but taking a dose of our bitter pill with a side of Wyatt Cenac is pretty delicious.

This is not a comedy show. It is an informative documentary series on the current state of our public system in the U.S. And it is beautiful A honest piece, that uses humor to break the tensions of analyzing very serious and real problems affecting many in the country today. I just wish one didn't need a HBO subscription to view it.