White Famous

The writing of White Famous is light and scathingly funny, a remarkable trait in what may be the most comfortable uncomfortable portrayal of fame and racism on television this season. Pharaoh, who famously departed “Saturday Night Live” to take this role, exercises a dramatic flexibility that shines through in Floyd.

Pharaoh was an underrated and underutilized player on “Saturday Night Live” and he finally gets to shine here. With great comedic timing, strong acting chops and charisma to spare, Pharaoh elevates White Famous, making it a series well worth your time.

While White Famous proves he [Jay Pharoah] can lead a series, it doesn’t give him many opportunities to show how funny he is. It does make a great argument that everyone in Hollywood is criminally unhinged.

Consistently watchable due to a versatile and charismatic lead performance by Jay Pharoah, White Famous still feels like an impersonal relic of television past.

White Famous is the oldest trick in Hollywood's book, a phony Horatio Alger story that's really a vanity project struggling to validate its own vanity. [13 Oct 2017, p.48]

White Famous is a jumble of hyper-masculine yucks designed to titillate and amusemale viewers, but its viewpoint feels outdated and in poor taste.

White Famous is so corrosive that it ends up fighting itself. The self-loathing here is the type that’s common to so many Hollywood satires, filled with the requisite pythons and soul crushers who keep the sausage factory conveyor belt moving. But much of this goes beyond loathing to self-lacerating. ... Awful.