Whether it’s reliving slavery, modern-day lynchings, or using the N word as a character catalyst – it can feel like most Black TV shows are only focused on Black trauma.
So it was refreshing to see a new show with an all Black family - not focused on racism, but on universal struggles like grief and addiction. In Things Like These, on Fibe TV1, Blackness is never mentioned even though it is in the room.
Things Like These, is a Halifax-based production created by Nikki Martin and directed by her sister Tobi Martin-Fleming. It's their first greenlit narrative TV series, described as a darkly comedic short-form drama series. The show focuses on a Black family in an affluent white neighbourhood navigating loss.
After their military father dies, the mother and 4 children are left in shambles. The eldest daughter has become an alcoholic, the middle daughter is being bullied, the only son wants to follow in his father’s footsteps as he prepares to graduate high school, and the youngest daughter is escaping in a world of fantasy - going so far as to pretend she is a fairy to avoid her reality. The mother of the family, a real estate agent, is trying her best to hold the family together but is failing with no support system.
