Holding Out Hope for "Kevin Hill"

WASHINGTON -- This year I thought we'd finally get a successful dramatic television series featuring a black actor in the lead. Like those faithful Red Sox fans whose long years of loyalty may finally be rewarded, I had a good feeling about this season. While the Sox rode to a pennant on the broad backs of Curt Schilling and David Ortiz, I looked with confidence to Taye Diggs and UPN.

I was sure that "Kevin Hill," running Wednesday nights on that network, would be a lock.

In the first place, there's the lead performer. Diggs is a talented actor with solid stage and big-screen credentials. He was in the original cast of the Broadway smash "Rent." He's appeared in several films that have done well at the box office, including "Chicago" and "How Stella Got Her Groove Back." Perhaps just as important, he's good looking and surrounded by a good-looking cast.

In the second place, there's the story line. As Hill, Diggs is a playboy attorney whose busy social calendar gets ripped to shreds when his 10-month-old cousin is left in his care. Adapting slowly to the demands of raising a delightful little girl, he runs into trouble at his high-powered entertainment firm. He soon quits and becomes the first male lawyer at a firm where the work hours are family-friendly and the managing partner is a single mom.

While promoting the show, Diggs spoke of his pride in starring in a program that showed "an African-American male who's successful and very secure and who is not running away from his responsibility."

In the post-"Cosby" era, the presence of a successful, paternal black man is not reason enough to expect an audience to embrace a show. Still, Diggs makes a good point. I believe there's always room for another show about a black man who learns to regard a child as the center of his universe. There's no indication, at least so far, that many viewers agree with me.

So far, "Kevin Hill" has only achieved fair-to-middling ratings. For the week ending Oct. 17, the show got 3.9 million viewers, 1.4 million less than its lead-in, "America's Next Top Model 3." Its so-so performance since its Sept. 29 debut makes me wonder if it will succumb to the fate of nearly all black dramatic shows that preceded it: quick cancellation.

Yes, I know it's a stretch to call "Kevin Hill" a black show -- only two of its six leads are African-American -- but I'm no longer looking for an all-black cast. I'll settle for a show with a black person as its central character and free of the usual sitcom detritus -- canned laughter and the exchange of crude insults.

It's not like we've seen many of them. There've been more blacks elected to the Senate since Reconstruction -- two -- than there have been long-running television dramas featuring black lead characters. I'm not talking about buddy-buddy shows such as "In the Heat of the Night" or multiracial ensemble shows such as "Hill Street Blues." I'm talking about black peoples' lives front and center. You've probably heard of the Curse of the Bambino, which supposedly has kept the Red Sox from winning a World Series since they traded Babe Ruth. I'm beginning to suspect a similar curse haunts those of us who long for a hit black TV drama.

I remember 1979, when it looked like it would finally happen. "The Lazarus Syndrome" debuted that year, starring Louis Gossett Jr. He'd won an Emmy and would eventually nab an Oscar too. He played a hard-charging cardiologist. It lasted a month.

"Harris and Company" debuted that same year, starring Bernie Casey as a widower with five kids. It lasted about three weeks.

"Paris" also hit the airwaves in 1979, starring the great James Earl Jones as a police captain and criminology professor. Four months, then poof!

They've come and gone since that brief, golden moment, occasional blips in a mostly nauseating series of sitcoms. "Gabriel's Fire." "Gideon's Crossing." "431 Hope Street."

The most curious thing about these shows is not that white viewers have rejected them. For the most part, so have blacks. Despite near-constant criticism of the media images of African-Americans, dramatic series have failed to pull substantial black audiences. Seven of the top 10 programs watched by African-Americans during the week ending Oct. 17 were UPN shows, for example, but none was a drama.

Until the ax falls, I'm holding out hope that "Kevin Hill" eventually joins that top 10 list. As any Red Sox fan can tell you, nothing's impossible.