Monday, Aug. 10, 1998
Linc's
By JAMES COLLINS
Linc's may have an almost entirely black cast, but anyone who thinks it is just another ethnic sitcom featuring bawdiness and near minstrelsy is in for a surprise. Produced by Tim Reid, who created the esteemed but short-lived Frank's Place, this show aims high, taking up issues of race, politics and sexual orientation. The hero, played by Steven Williams, is a black Republican who owns a bar in a rundown but gentrifying neighborhood of Washington. His regular customers include a natty lobbyist, a prostitute, an African cab driver and, the only white, an aide to a decrepit Southern Senator. Pam Grier plays the smart, attractive head of a children's advocacy group. The show is worthy, but its ideas are obvious and it lacks what those coarse series do at least offer--humor, life, energy. Weighed down by the tone of dead-serious satire, the jokes on Linc's usually land with a thud.
--By James Collins