ISSA RAE'S 'SEEN & HEARD' IS A BEAUTIFUL START TO A MUCH BIGGER CONVERSATION

Television has always been a house of mirrors, reflecting who we are—or who we wish to see. And for most of its runtime, Seen & Heard: The History of Black Television scratches that itch.

The two‑part HBO documentary is a sweeping series spanning decades of Black presence on American television. From the early days of reductive, often dehumanizing caricatures on vaudeville-inspired variety shows, through the subversive joys of Norman Lear’s Good Times and The Jeffersons, to the rise of Black creative agency in shows like Atlanta and Abbott Elementary.

Yet the series doesn’t try to compress all of Black television into one tidy timeline. Instead, it opts for what might feel like an impressionistic sketch: moments, voices, breakthroughs, setbacks. The first episode—"Seen"—traces visibility: the earliest appearances, the limited roles. It reminds us of how representation, however flawed, was often still a feat. The second episode—"Heard"—turns inward, toward authorship: who tells the stories, who owns their work, and, most importantly, who profits.

There Was Nobody Like Me on TV.

Seen & Heard is less a nostalgia trip than it is a reckoning: a documentary that navigates Black television’s past glories, betrayals, and unfulfilled promises, while also staking a claim to a future filled with intentional, honest storytelling. Directed by Phil Bertelsen and Geeta Gandbhir, executive produced by Issa Rae with Rae’s HOORAE Media as the driving force behind the project, the doc demands that we see not just what's been made, but what hasn’t—and why.

"Seen" charts the emergence of Black visibility. It’s an archive of how Blackness was once filtered through white fear and fascination, and how, slowly, that lens began to shift. There are clips from Julia, starring Diahann Carroll, and The Cosby Show, and the usual suspects, but what matters more than the footage is the framing. Rae and the filmmakers seem less interested in nostalgia than in critique: What did it mean to be seen in those eras? Who was doing the looking?

"Heard", takes a necessary turn toward authorship and power. Here, the question isn't “Who’s on screen?” but “Who controls the narrative?” And it’s a crucial shift. Tyler Perry, Shonda Rhimes, Mara Brock Akil, Kenya Barris, and other heavy-hitters weigh in on what it means to tell Black stories from the inside—and the structural resistance they still face. It’s a reminder that representation without authorship is just another kind of trap.

And then there’s Oprah. There’s always Oprah. Watching her speak with surgical clarity about the industry’s racial hierarchy—while fully embodying its exception—is potentially one of the documentary’s most powerful contradictions. You’re moved, and you’re left wondering how many Oprahs didn’t make it through the gauntlet. How many Black creatives never got to be heard?

I Wanna Take Over the World Through Television.

The project, which began development in 2019, recount not just the triumphs of Black storytelling but the persistent roadblocks that have too often stripped creators of the rewards their work built.

The doc starts with Amos and Andy, a radio show originally voiced by two white men turned controversial, caricature-drive television series, then moves through the next few decades—through the 70s and 80s and hit shows like Diff'rent Strokes and Sanford & Son, all of which had their fair share of issues, including the fact that many of these hit shows were conceived and guarded by white creators.

Many of the creators featured in the documentary speak about how special the 90s were for Black TV, with many considering it a Golden Age of the Black sitcom. Numerous shows paved the way for long careers in the industry: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which gave Will Smith his acting start; Martin, which was comedian Martin Lawrence’s breakout; and Moesha, which starred teen pop star-turned-title artist Brandy.

The list goes on and on with shows like In Living Color, created by the now legendary Wayans family, which itself gave opportunities to fellow cast members, like Jamie Foxx, who went on the headline The Jamie Foxx Show. During this time, Black people weren't just in front of the camera, but in writer's rooms, and behind the lens. Black people had power and budgets on a wide scale, maybe for the first time since the advent of the medium.  

Girlfriends followed in 2000 with Joan (Tracee Ellis Ross), Toni (Jill Marie Jones), Maya (Golden Brooks) and Lynn (Persia White)—four Black women in their thirties trying to figure out their place in the world and doing it together. And that journey would birth Issa Rae's Insecure 16 years later.

By the time Scandal premiered in 2012, it had been 40 years since a Black woman had a leading role in a network drama. And fortunately, this marked the onset of a completely new era of Black TV: Kenya Barris’ Black-ish, Ava DuVernay’s Queen Sugar found their way to our TV and streaming platforms. The uptick continued up until a few years ago. And the reasons behind the slowdown are very, very layered.  

Overcoming is a Journey.

What Seen & Heard captures so well is the emotional undercurrent of all this history. There’s a moment with Tracee Ellis Ross and Anthony Anderson in a green room reflecting on Black-ish, and it feels intimate, even tender. Not because it’s sentimental, but because they understand what their presence meant—what it costs to do this kind of work while trying to carry a community’s hopes on your shoulders. These moments puncture the surface of the documentary’s more historical scaffolding and let it breathe.

Still, for all its strengths, Seen & Heard doesn’t entirely escape the limitations of its format. At just two episodes, it can only gesture toward the breadth of Black television, and in doing so, skips over voices and shows that deserve more than a passing mention. There’s little room for deeper dives into experimental or politically radical Black TV, or the kind of media that lives outside the corporate studio system. You get the arc, but not always the nuance.

The other tension is tonal. The series tries to celebrate and critique at the same time, which occasionally leads to uneven pacing. Minstrelsy, Jim Crow‐era constraints, the tightly controlled portrayals—all good material, but some sections zip past because the documentary must catch up to the present. Also, some of the systemic forces—the economics, the mergers, platform shifts, regulatory changes—get less narrative weight than personalities. It wants to honor how far we’ve come while not letting the industry off the hook—and in some sections, that balance gets tricky.

There’s an optimism here, especially toward the end, that feels a little too neat, as if we’ve reached some kind of satisfying turning point. But we haven’t. Not really.

We Will Be Seen As We Should Be Seen.

What we have reached is a deeper awareness, a growing refusal to accept visibility as a stand-in for justice. And that’s what makes Seen & Heard essential viewing. It’s less of a history lesson and more of a call—subtle but persistent—for structural change, for ownership, for authorship, for full creative freedom. In Rae’s world, being seen is no longer enough. You deserve to be heard—and paid, and protected, and allowed to fail and try again.

Seen & Heard isn’t perfect. It’s selective; it carries an inherent tension between celebrating what has been won and mourning what remains undone. But what it does gets under the skin. It reminds us that television isn’t entertainment alone—it’s labor, legacy, memory, power. It argues that progress isn't linear, and that representation alone—even in beloved shows—is not enough if the institutions behind the scenes remain exclusionary.

For anyone who gauges culture by its storytellers rather than just its storylines—Seen & Heard offers both history and a horizon. In a moment when optics often substitute for action, it insists that being seen is necessary but not sufficient, and being heard is what transforms visibility into change. The Emmys, an award for artistic and technical merit for the television industry, aired just last night and there was exactly one Black winner: Tramell Tillman for his supporting role in Severance, making him the first, and thus, only, Black actor to win in that category. And it's an eerie reminder of how far we have left to go on the road to progress.

Television is a mirror—curating, distorting, editing down what feels safe to reflect. In Seen & Heard the mirror is shattered and reassembled. And what’s left is a moving, imperfect mosaic of progress and erasure, of groundbreaking moments and the deep cost of being the “first” or the “only.” The documentary doesn’t try to be definitive. It tries to be honest. And in that, it succeeds.

In the end, this isn’t the final word on Black television. It’s the opening chapter of a bigger, messier, and far more urgent story. Let’s hope that story, one day, gets the full series order.

4/5 ★: Not the final word. Just the first honest one.