The famous American actor, filmmaker, and playwright, Tyler Perry, is well known for having delivered quite a few misses in his large body of work, but perhaps nothing comes close to his new drama series on Netflix, titled Beauty in Black. Set in Atlanta, the series follows a young woman named Kimmie’s struggles to escape the exploitative world of adult entertainment and her eventual run-ins with the Bellarie family, which owns and runs almost every business in the community. To say that Beauty in Black is one of the worst things I have ever watched on Netflix would not be any exaggeration, and to sit through its 16 episodes in total requires some genuine patience or extreme love for bad TV soaps.
Beauty in Black begins with an introduction to the protagonist, Kimmie, who works as a performer at a local strip club and is often forced into prostitution by her boss, Jules. But Kimmie is trying desperately hard to turn her life around in order to make her younger sister proud, for the latter is still under the impression that she is doing very well in life, working as a nurse. Seeing the opportunity of a lifetime, she signs up for a scholarship provided by the Bellarie Beauty in Black haircare company, the owners of which are the billionaire family running the entire community in this part of the city. However, as time progresses, Kimmie starts to realize that the Bellaries, whom she and most others have idolized for so long, are not honorable or respectable people; they have their own dark secrets and terrible scandals that can put any family to shame.
Thus begins the saga of the Bellarie family members; the distrust and hatred towards each other is not only terribly off-putting but also immensely unconvincing. The trust issues and resulting insecurities of each of the family members are woven into the narrative of the series, making them integral plot points that are not at all interesting. The patriarch of the family, for example, Horace Bellarie, has a terrible relationship with his brother, Norman, at present, despite them having once taken over the family business together and taken it to great heights. While such a falling out is not unbelievable, the reason behind their distance does not really add up in the context of their characters either. Horace hates his brother for having once slept with his wife, Olivia, meaning that he never forgives any wrongdoing against him, and yet he blindly trusts Kimmie even after finding out about her actions. Horace is shown to be a character stereotypically tough enough to give orders to murder without any hesitation and even hates his sons so much that he starts acting against them, but is also then posed as the relatively good man.
In return, Norman hates his brother so much that he is willing to launch attacks and kill his own family at the drop of a hat. There is no gravity to the characters at all, and they often express anger or frustration by throwing a knife at each other (or shooting bullets) and then boasting about how they missed on purpose, as a sort of warning. Olivia continues to harbor exceptionally negative feelings towards her ex-husband, Horace, while doing just about anything to ensure that she will receive the family inheritance in time. The younger members of the family are equally uninspiring, with the elder son Roy and his wife Mallory constantly fighting because of their extreme possessiveness, while the younger son Charlie is given a boring storyline with a befuddling romantic relationship at its center.
Amidst all of this, Kimmie tries to deal with the adverse situations that she has to face in order to escape the industry and then eventually even has to protect her younger sister from danger when the latter is kidnapped by the same people exploiting her. As she goes on a rampage towards the beginning of part 2 of the series (as season 1 was released in two separate parts, with 8 episodes each), the supremely outlandish plot and motivations of the show are revealed. The dialogue is as bad as the plot and the narrative, if not worse, and its excessive use of expletives seems like an unnecessary attempt at making things interesting. Most of the dialogue that is intended to create moments or give some depth to the characters ends up becoming farcical and evokes laughter, if anything. The dialogue, in particular, tremendously bears the style of TV soap operas, it was perhaps suited for a specific kind of audience, but it was definitely a miss for me.
At the core of the series is the rotten nature of the Bellarie family, which sounds good on paper, but the attempted presentation of the cruelty of the members and their morally defunct nature is absolutely horrible. While flaws in storylines and character developments are nothing new in today’s day and age, where putting out content fast is emphasized over anything else, shows and films of this production value often manage to hide these flaws with other characteristics, like smooth visuals or clever storytelling. But Beauty in Black feels like a mess in every aspect, and all of it comes together in such an unappealing fashion that the bad writing makes you notice the terrible plot, which makes you notice the exaggerated makeup, which highlights the bad acting performances, and so on.
The acting department in the series tremendously fails, either because of the shortcomings of the actors themselves or because the screenplay did not do them any favors. Taylor Polidore Williams, as the protagonist, Kimmie, is simply unbearable at times and mostly unmoving, since she seems to be able to emote only extreme expressions. The others, like Ricco Ross as Horace or Julian Horton as Roy, are equally unconvincing. The only standout performance is delivered by Crystie Stewart, in the role of Mallory Bellarie, and she manages to keep the scenes with her in them quite interesting. The soundtrack mostly has hip-hop songs blaring at different moments, although their frequent occurrence makes it a tedious affair to listen to as well. Absolutely nothing stands out in the visuals, and it only serves as the basis of telling the story.
The series would have perhaps made for a better watching experience had it been released on TV on a weekly basis, but at eight episodes at a time, it is simply too much to take. With an unconvincing and uninteresting plot, unintentionally funny and cheesy dialogues, outlandish twists, and bad acting, Beauty in Black season 1 is really as bad as a Netflix series can get and should be avoided at all costs in my opinion.
