Note: This is one of my list of the 400 Most Notable TV Shows Set in New York City, in honor of the 400th Anniversary of the founding of NYC - the full explanation and list of titles can be found by clicking my username (DeanNYC) and looking for the list on my Profile Page.
Reviews of each show are being posted under their respective titles.
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When you heard the name "Wayans," especially during the 1990s, the first thing that came to mind had to have been something funny! Fox's sketch comedy program "In Living Color," created by Keenan Ivory Wayans, was a massive success and even had a live Super Bowl Halftime episode that ran against The Big Game's show one year. And "The Wayans Bros." sitcom was likewise a comedy smash.
That's why, when Damon Wayans, one of the biggest contributor of laughs to "In Living Color," created a show, it was kind of a surprise that it was a heavy drama, and it included Kelly Coffield, one of the players on that previous comedy series.
"413 Hope St." was the story of a man whose son was killed in a random act of violence - a robber wanted the kid's sneakers. The son refused, so the attacker gunned him down.
The great Richard Roundtree, who we lost in 2023, was Phil Thomas, that father who lost his son, and his response to this tragedy was to create a Crisis Center where affected young people can go for help, be it physical, psychological, even, at times, financial. The location of the center was the title of the program, the very place where his son lost his life.
The "ensemble cast" trend was in full effect in 1997, when this show premiered. Fox's law dramedy "Ally McBeal" debuted three days before this one. "ER" was a massive success on NBC, among a bunch of shows with lots of people that aired in the Fall of that year.
Part of the reason why this show didn't find an audience is that the subject matter was pretty heavy. Kids dealing with unwanted pregnancies, AIDS and other STDs, a story line with incest, all that would be rough for an ADULT to have to handle. But many of the guests on the series were teens, which was the focus, and that gritty realism might have been a bit too much for viewers.
Another part could have been the timeslot the show got: Thursday at 9pm ET on Fox. It ran headlong into NBC's lineup of "Must See TV." NBC absolutely OWNED Thursday Nights at the time, so it was highly unlikely that any show would have made a dent in their Nielsen points. But programming something as challenging and difficult as this, opposite a lineup of the best comedy hit series, just seemed like somebody wanted to get rid of this show, ASAP.
New York played a part in this series through the elements of crime, the AIDS crisis, which was still very real and raw in the city at the time, and just that foreboding sense of danger that always can exist when a bunch of strangers that have their own motivations and are out to get what they want.
Clearly the agenda the show had was in telling these tough tales, and when one of your series regulars gets the AIDS virus (Jesse L. Martin), that's about as heavy as it could be for this era of TV.
I don't know if anything could have saved this series, not even some comic relief. But I know the aspirations of the program were meant to bring the facts of what was happening to our collective homes, and for that, it deserves a lot of respect.
Reviews of each show are being posted under their respective titles.
//
When you heard the name "Wayans," especially during the 1990s, the first thing that came to mind had to have been something funny! Fox's sketch comedy program "In Living Color," created by Keenan Ivory Wayans, was a massive success and even had a live Super Bowl Halftime episode that ran against The Big Game's show one year. And "The Wayans Bros." sitcom was likewise a comedy smash.
That's why, when Damon Wayans, one of the biggest contributor of laughs to "In Living Color," created a show, it was kind of a surprise that it was a heavy drama, and it included Kelly Coffield, one of the players on that previous comedy series.
"413 Hope St." was the story of a man whose son was killed in a random act of violence - a robber wanted the kid's sneakers. The son refused, so the attacker gunned him down.
The great Richard Roundtree, who we lost in 2023, was Phil Thomas, that father who lost his son, and his response to this tragedy was to create a Crisis Center where affected young people can go for help, be it physical, psychological, even, at times, financial. The location of the center was the title of the program, the very place where his son lost his life.
The "ensemble cast" trend was in full effect in 1997, when this show premiered. Fox's law dramedy "Ally McBeal" debuted three days before this one. "ER" was a massive success on NBC, among a bunch of shows with lots of people that aired in the Fall of that year.
Part of the reason why this show didn't find an audience is that the subject matter was pretty heavy. Kids dealing with unwanted pregnancies, AIDS and other STDs, a story line with incest, all that would be rough for an ADULT to have to handle. But many of the guests on the series were teens, which was the focus, and that gritty realism might have been a bit too much for viewers.
Another part could have been the timeslot the show got: Thursday at 9pm ET on Fox. It ran headlong into NBC's lineup of "Must See TV." NBC absolutely OWNED Thursday Nights at the time, so it was highly unlikely that any show would have made a dent in their Nielsen points. But programming something as challenging and difficult as this, opposite a lineup of the best comedy hit series, just seemed like somebody wanted to get rid of this show, ASAP.
New York played a part in this series through the elements of crime, the AIDS crisis, which was still very real and raw in the city at the time, and just that foreboding sense of danger that always can exist when a bunch of strangers that have their own motivations and are out to get what they want.
Clearly the agenda the show had was in telling these tough tales, and when one of your series regulars gets the AIDS virus (Jesse L. Martin), that's about as heavy as it could be for this era of TV.
I don't know if anything could have saved this series, not even some comic relief. But I know the aspirations of the program were meant to bring the facts of what was happening to our collective homes, and for that, it deserves a lot of respect.
