SummaryEditorial assistant Nella (Sinclair Daniel) is excited to not be the only Black woman at her company with the hiring of Hazel (Ashleigh Murray), but soon after begins experiencing strange happenings in this thriller based on Zakiya Dalila Harris' novel.
SummaryEditorial assistant Nella (Sinclair Daniel) is excited to not be the only Black woman at her company with the hiring of Hazel (Ashleigh Murray), but soon after begins experiencing strange happenings in this thriller based on Zakiya Dalila Harris' novel.
Although the show starts to flag somewhat over the latter half of the season, the performances of The Other Black Girl's cast elevate any slowdown in pacing or stumbles in tone, leaving you just as driven to keep pressing play on each subsequent episode to find out what will happen next.
The pleasure of The Other Black Girl lies in its willingness to take big swings, by all appearances unbothered by the pressure to be anything other than whatever it wants to be.
It’s Daniel as Nella who really shines as a woman caught in a whirlwind of confusion, fear and ambition. It’s a tricky balance, befitting the show. Both Nella and the show pull it off, if not with ease, then at least with confidence.
Ms. Harris and her screenwriters may have been out to spoof the world of publishing and lampoon its less-diverse corners, but we don't believe the characters because the script abandons basic impulses of human nature—ambition and anger, but also the God-given, self-preservationist instinct to read a room. .... Where the Diana-Nella collaboration will go—and what Richard actually knows—are intriguing questions posed by the plot, and a viewer might want to wade through the illogic to find answers.
The genre shift ends up distracting from, rather than deepening, all the wonderful observations of the season’s first half about Nella and Hazel’s tricky interpersonal negotiations. Still, there’s so much to like about this series, from the deft performances (Beauvais may be better known these days as a cast member on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” but she’s terrific and sly here) to the look of the show itself.