Black quirkiness is underrated.
Director Paul Hunter —a music video titan — taps into this chamber with Government Cheese, a new comedy drama series on Apple TV+. The show follows an ex-con re-acclimating with his family after doing time for check fraud at Chino State Prison. Hampton Chambers, played by David Oyelowo, comes home to a figurative cold house. His wife is unsure on how to bring her husband back into the fold and relegates him to living in the garage, his youngest son has contempt for his father, and his oldest son, an Ivy League-level genius, lacks drive. But Hampton has a brilliant idea to patent a self-sharpening drill — called the Bit Magician —and sell it to a local aerospace company.
While these eccentric characters power the show, Bootsy, played by Bokeem Woodbine, is a whimsical standout. Woodbine, who says it's important to show success of Black men leaving prison ( “There’s human beings who make mistakes, pay their debt to society, come out and change their life around one hundred and eighty degrees. Those types of stories are rarely depicted because it goes against the prevailing notion of who we are.”), gets an opportunity to show another element from his acting bag.
“When casting directors or the powers that be are thinking of Bokeem Woodbine, they’re probably not thinking quirky,” Woodbine told LEVEL. “I relished the opportunity to express that through this character because that’s part of my real personality. I’m a bit quirky myself.”
Hunter and co-creator Aeysha Carr based the screenplay on his real-life family growing up in the San Fernando Valley in the 1960s. His father really did go to prison. And Hunter worked for an aerospace company where he sold cutting tools. It’s an atypical Black narrative and that’s what excited Oyelowo about the script.
“It was period but it didn’t have the civil rights or racial struggle components that you normally see with Black people at that time in history,” Oyelowo told LEVEL. “There were so many things about it that were both fresh and familiar in the right way.”
Executive produced by Oyelowo and MACRO’s Charles D. King, the series is available for streaming today.