Sherman's Showcase Black History Month Spectacular airs next week with perfect timing

TV Guide

Diallo Riddle and Bashir Salahuddin's IFC musical sketch comedy series announced in January that it would celebrate Black History Month during the summer, instead of the traditional month of February, with a one-hour June 19 special airing on AMC, a much bigger platform. Sherman's Showcase Black History Month Spectacular is especially relevant amid the Black Lives Matter protests over police brutality. "What makes Sherman's Showcase (the overall series, but also this specific installation) so resonant and important is that it acknowledges Black struggle and pain, while remaining light and silly," says Malcolm Venable. "This, as anyone who's been watching the news in recent weeks knows, is not easy to do. Some sketches depict black men interacting with police --interactions that, as everyone around the world knows, sit on the opposite end of the spectrum from comedy. They can be deadly or dehumanizing. Merely watching another Black person's interaction with police on cell phone footage can be triggering and traumatizing and yet, on Sherman's Showcase's Black History Spectacular, this primal understanding is baked into moments we know are designed to make us giggle, the inherent danger turned into soft cushioning for the jokes to land."