Ms. Pat’s BET+ Sitcom Flips the Familiar Format Her Way
At first glance, you might think you recognize The Ms. Pat Show. Now streaming on BET+, it certainly holds the trappings of the Black sitcoms you know: a hardworking family in the Midwest with three predictably funny kids, comic relief from a nearby aunt, and even showbiz pedigrees like episodes directed by Debbie Allen and Kim Fields. In fact, the show has received the blessing of sitcom legend Norman Lear (All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Good Times).
But once you remember that Ms. Pat (Netflix, The Patdown Podcast) rose to prominence for many through Netflix’s series The Degenerates, it starts to stand apart.
“[We] took multi-cams and just turned them upside down,” she said as we chatted the day The Ms. Pat Show landed in full on BET+. “I have to thank people like Redd Foxx and Bernie Mac […] and Richard Pryor, who could use that kind of language. Pryor would have been hysterical if they would have let him. But I come along twenty, thirty years later, and a streaming platform allowed me to be me.”
This freedom isn’t a given in the world of sitcoms, a problem that gets compounded for women and even more so for women of color (see also: Margaret Cho’s All-American Girl and Cristela Alonzo’s self-titled show). Pat is aware of this challenge, noting, “A lot of the time when you’re a comedian, they try to take you and turn you into something else.” But a key difference likely comes in the outlet of choice for the show. BET+ is a perfect match for Ms. Pat’s unrestrained and matter-of-fact style of comedy, and her co-creator Jordan E. Cooper took great pains to find a platform that wouldn’t water her down.
“[Jordan] navigated that – because I thought it was crazy!,” she shared, laughing at the idea that “they’re gonna let my big Black butt on TV and talk the way I talk at home,” but he confidently countered, “we will find a home.” It was his influence that permitted the show’s production company, 20th Century Television, to take the show to streaming – where they agree her work belongs.
What results is a show that tackles the reality of being Black in predominantly White spaces of the country, but also pokes fun at making that contrast palatable for White viewers. Pat affirms that framing, saying, “In this household, we show you the world’s not perfect […] people really live this way, Everybody doesn’t have Claire Huxtable. Everybody didn’t have [the Cosbys] as mom and dad.” And in fact, my biggest smile of the pilot came when Pat asks her daughter Janelle, as she struggles with fitting into her new and mostly White high school, “You love making white people uncomfortable. Isn’t this place for you?” Simply put: Claire Huxtable could never.
In addition to breaking new ground for the Black sitcom format, the show allowed Ms. Pat to add acting to her skill set, something that previously wasn’t in the repertoire. “I’m not really a big act out person with the material I write – usually I just stand there,” she noted of her stage persona prior to the show. But after spending time on sets, and getting directed by veterans of TV, she promises we’ll see that change in her on stage. “[Acting] made me pay attention to the way I write, to grab more funny out of the situation, of the joke that I’m telling you.” Put more functionally, with a laugh? “They’re gonna see me sweating more on stage. I’m gonna be moving around a lot more!”
Five years on with this project, and two and a half years after bringing it to soundstages in front of live audiences, Ms. Pat sees this as the starting point for more opportunities to act. But she also wants you to know, she’ll never give up on the first love: standup. Whereas TV is a collaborative act of creation, she calls standup “my vehicle. I drive that vehicle. [The show] is BET’s vehicle, they drive that vehicle.” Furthermore, the show wouldn’t exist without her being able to capture the experiences of her family onstage – so she sees standup as a necessary way to mine her life for more show material. “I got a lot of funny people at the house! You know, this show is based on 95-98% of my real life. So if I stop standup, who’s gonna tell you all what’s going on in Ms. Pat’s house? There’s some funny stuff going on over there!”
And it was that belief, not just in how funny that stuff is, but also that it could enrich the lives of others, that pushed her to keep hoping for the show’s eventual production and release. That was the biggest lesson that she learned through the whole process of bringing her real life to television:
If you believe in a project, don’t ever let anybody change your mind on it. Because these execs, sometimes they’ll buy the product but they don’t see your vision. And that was one of the [scariest] things for me: standing up for myself with execs. Because, you know, I’m from the streets, but then you’ve got these people who are offering you a TV show and you have to say, ‘oh, do I bow down or do I stand for what I believe in?’
That’s what I learned the most from TV. If you believe in what you have, stand on that. Because eventually it will end up in the right place.
BET+, the right place for The Ms. Pat Show, has all episodes streaming now. You can also see Ms. Pat with her first love, standup, on tour dates across the country. Find when she’s coming to your city at mspatcomedy.com.
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Amma Marfo
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