Wonderful World of Color

"Literate, funny, warm and tender" was Producer Hal Kanter's unblushing preseason review of his new NBC show Julia, the first TV series to focus on a Negro family. "Julia will be an opportunity to show the world how black people live," chimed in Diahann Carroll, late of Broadway (No Strings) and Hollywood (Hurry Sundown), who plays the title role.

Now eleven episodes old, Julia unfortunately shows no such thing. It is trite, sugary and preposterous. Take one recent show. When a kid says "Hello, there" to Julia's bright six-year-old son Corey (Marc Copage), he pipes: "Hello, where?" Squeals Corey's teen-age baby sitter: "You've got the wildest mind since they wrapped Ezra Pound in a wet sheet!" Later, a white neighbor lady in Julia's high-priced integrated apartment building pops in to exclaim: "This is the most exciting thing that's happened around here since the cat had kit tens in the washing machine!"

Up the Scale to No. 6. As for that intimate, inside look at the life and times of black people, Julia seems more like The Wonderful World of Color. In one episode, when a character conveniently named Potts makes a slighting reference about Negroes, Julia delivers her big punch line: "Is Potts calling the black a kettle?" Producer Kanter promises more of this hard-hitting social commentary in forthcoming shows. "In one program," says Kanter, "there's a Negro male who's a failure and blames it all on his being colored. We straighten him out. In another, Corey is called 'nigger,' and the conflict is whether he should beat up the other kid or not."

Larger interracial issues are ignored. Asked if Julia will ever be involved with a white man, Diahann says: "I don't think that's of primary importance. There's a great deal of sensationalism in that now, while the interaction of the black man and the black woman has not been explored at all and needs to be." In the meantime, the series will, as in the Dec. 24 episode, wallow in lesser issues like Corey's argument with a neighbor boy about whether or not Santa Claus is white. Title of the segment: "I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas."

Clearly, the producers of Julia are following the old nostrum: "If you can't lick the problem, sweeten it to death." By the standards of TV, this sort of treatment works; Julia is currently ranked No. 6 in the Nielsen ratings. Analyzing those numbers, NBC statisticians report that Julia attracts an "upscale" audience —more urban, wealthier and better educated than the average. There are no indications of either a boycott by Southern whites or heavier tune-in among blacks. Predictably, though, Negro militants are outraged. And, to be sure, Julia is rarely confronted with the tough problems of being born black. She would not recognize a ghetto if she stumbled into it, and she is, in every respect save color, a figure in a white milieu.