OWN's David Makes Man brings the rhapsodic and dreamy timbre of Moonlight to the small screen

TV Guide

Moonlight co-writer Tarell Alvin McCraney used his life to inspire the OWN drama told from the point of view of Akili McDowell's David, a 14-year-old black boy from a "troubled" home who attends a gifted school. The Oprah Winfrey- and Michael B. Jordan-produced David Makes Man "is a lush, poetic lullaby about a community of working-class African-Americans in Miami, leaning on each other as they paw their way out of hardships external and emotional," says Malcolm Venable. "A type of singular, almost mystical artistic vision informs the story — and the stunning first episode bears traces of the same kind of mythical, surrealist overtures seen in Atlanta." Venable adds: "David Makes Man, like Moonlight, delights in showing African Americans in stunning, vivid color: blues, violets and the pale pastels of Miami juxtaposed against light and shadow techniques that add a texture and depth so pretty it almost hurts...David Makes Man starts strong and remains consistently unpredictable; should it stay on the edge it's created for itself, it'll remain a standout on a network with no shortage of prestige dramas."

ALSO:

• David Makes Man faces  challenge in marrying the demands of serialized TV with an impressionistic style more common in film
• David Makes Man transcends expectations. It transcends genre. It just… transcends
• Executive producer Oprah Winfrey sees David Makes Man as a transformative show: "I felt that what David Makes Man could do, I just instinctively felt that, in the same way that Barack Obama was going to be president, what it had to say to the culture at this moment of time was like the new religion. I think storytelling is the new religion because this is how we get people to see and know the best of themselves.”
• Creator Tarell Alvin McCraney found inspiration for David Makes Man in his own despair: "The show came about because I was trying to track down those moments of trauma that were making it difficult for me to enjoy the moments of relative success that I was having. So many great things were happening for me, and I’d find myself depressed, in a fetal position, and then I realized I did not know how to be in the moment, take care of myself, love my body, my space, and the people around me... I wondered why I didn’t learn those things. I was surviving rather than living.”