Scrolling through 12 streaming platforms but still can’t find something to watch? You’re not alone. Our television columnist Michel Ghanem, a.k.a. @tvscholar, watches over 160 seasons of television each year, and he is here for you. Perhaps you’re in the mood for a hidden gem sitting undiscovered on a streamer or a show with mysteries so tantalizing we can’t stop thinking about it. It’s all about carving out time for the shows that are actually worth your time, or “appointment viewing.” Fire up that group chat, because we’ve got some unpacking to do.
Last month, we got big laughs from Big Boys, a U.K. comedy import from Hulu that brought back memories of being a naïve gay college twink in the 2010s. This month, we’re back with another queer recommendation: Prime Video’s Clean Slate, a wholesome and breezy sitcom starring and created by Orange is the New Black’s Laverne Cox.
What show should I prioritize this month?
It’s the most wonderful time of the year: The Emmy consideration deadline looms. From now until May, all the big blockbuster shows will come out swinging (think The White Lotus and Yellowjackets). Those are probably already on your watchlist, so you should consider adding Clean Slate to the rotation. It’s a charming sitcom created by and starring Laverne Cox — and one of the last projects produced by Norman Lear before his death.
There’s a time and a place for shows about murder investigations and crime, but I started to feel dead body burnout sometime late last year. I’ve been craving lighter, heartwarming shows to distract from doomscrolling, something I can throw on while I’m folding my laundry that won’t give me nightmares later that night. Clean Slate hits all of those notes and happens to be one of the very few shows currently on television that centers a trans person in a nonviolent story about rebuilding in early midlife.
Where can I watch it?
All eight episodes are now streaming on Prime Video.
How much time will I need to catch up?
The episodes clock in at barely 20 minutes, in traditional sitcom style, making this a quick watch you can squeeze in on meal breaks or before you head out the door in the morning.
What’s it about?
Clean Slate stars Emmy winner and all-around icon Cox as Desiree, a New York-based art gallerist who returns home to Alabama for the first time in 17 years to live with her estranged father, Harry — a particularly funny performance by George Wallace, who plays the father who has no idea how to approach trans identity, much less how to navigate the use of pronouns. But he quickly jumps onboard, adding cash to the pronoun jar when he slips up and calling out someone in church when they try to make Desiree introduce herself as new to the congregation. (“She ain’t new, she just …renovated,” he says to fellow churchgoers.) As for Desiree, she’s reeling from a professional failure in New York. Her mantras, breathwork, and inner-child healing only take her so far — especially when they clash with the way things go in the Deep South — but she begins forging something of a new life as she builds relationships in town. Despite having sworn off men, she sparks a romance with her father’s employee Mack (Jay Wilkison), a rugged ex-con and car washer with a very precocious daughter (Norah Murphy).
Clean Slate goes down like a glass of cold lemonade on a hot summer day. It probably won’t inspire the deepest musings or be as outwardly funny as something like Big Boys, but where it might falter in its writing, it makes up for with heart. As Angelica Ross writes in the introduction to Tre’vell Anderson’s We See Each Other: A Black, Trans Journey Through TV and Film, “In transness, nothing is simply a television show. Every word and image and sound is a reflection of our world.” It’s a relief that Clean Slate is a story about a trans person that isn’t traumatic. That isn’t to minimize the very real violence trans people face around the world, which is often depicted on even the most joyous shows about trans people, like Pose, but Clean Slate feels like its own kind of trans tipping point (to borrow the words Time used to describe Cox’s 2014 magazine cover) for television. A sitcom can now be as much about goofy punchlines as it is about healing the relationship between a father and his trans daughter.
Watch if you like …
Schitt’s Creek comes to mind. The early seasons of the Emmy-winning Canadian sitcom were a bit rough around the edges — the characters were compelling, but it received lukewarm reviews from critics and didn’t get nominated for any Emmys until its more developed fifth and sixth seasons. Clean Slate has similar fish-out-of-water small-town charms with quirky supporting characters — like Louis (D.K. Uzoukwu), Desiree’s closeted friend whom she convinces to try Grindr. With these neighborly dynamics and budding love stories, I can imagine Clean Slate pulling a Schitt’s Creek and becoming more meaningful as the series grows deeper roots in later seasons. A breakdown monologue in the finale reminded me that Cox has impressive acting chops and there is plenty of emotional exploration ahead for her character.
There are also parallels with Hulu’s too-quickly-canceled and underrated dramedy UnPrisoned, which is sort of a reversed Clean Slate — a father (Delroy Lindo) is released from prison, also after 17 years, and is reunited with his daughter (Kerry Washington), a therapist who attempts to heal their strained relationship. But if you need something that cuts a bit deeper, try HBO’s Somebody Somewhere. The three-season gem stars Bridget Everett as Sam, a 40-something who moves back home to Kansas to start a new life at the time of her sister’s death. Somebody Somewhere substitutes punchlines for softer meditations on grief and existentialism. Sam, like Desiree, has imperfect relationships with her family and craves a new community, which she finds in a gay friend she reconnects with from high school (Jeff Hiller) and in rekindling her love for singing. At their core, both shows are essentially saying something similar: Community is important and we are hardwired for meaningful connection, particularly when everything else feels like it’s falling apart around us. We can never have enough of those stories on television.