''Platinum'' is an American

drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...

series which aired on

UPN The United Paramount Network (UPN) was an American broadcast television network that launched on January 16, 1995. It was originally owned by Chris-Craft Industries' United Television. Viacom (through its Paramount Television unit, which prod ...

from April 14 to May 13, 2003. Created by

John Ridley John Ridley IV (born 1965) is an American screenwriter, television director, novelist, and showrunner, known for '' 12 Years a Slave'', for which he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He is also the creator and showrunner of the a ...

and

Sofia Coppola Sofia Carmina Coppola (; born May 14, 1971) is an American filmmaker and actress. The youngest child and only daughter of filmmakers Eleanor Coppola, Eleanor and Francis Ford Coppola, she made her film debut as an infant in her father's acclaimed ...

, the series is a family saga that follows two brothers who own and operate a

record company A record label, or record company, is a brand or trademark of music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a publishing company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the produc ...

Premise

Brothers and record industry moguls Jackson and Grady Rhames are the archetype of rags-to-riches success after building their company, Sweetback Entertainment, from the ground up. Clawing their way up from the streets, the brothers have created a successful record company in the high-stakes hip-hop music business. Though they are deeply trusting of and dependent upon one another, the brothers approach business in starkly contrasting fashions. Set in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

against the backdrop of the glamorous hip-hop lifestyle, the series portrays a cutthroat and sometimes dangerous business notorious for its flashy stars with money to burn and ruthless record executives who stop at nothing to make it big. Standing by the brothers' side is their childhood friend and chief counsel David Ross, their younger sister Jade Rhames and Jackson's wife Monica Rhames.

Cast

Episodes

Development

co-created the series with

. After three years of not finding a network, the series was picked up by

with an order of six episodes. In the interim, a deal with

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...

fell through and at one point, producers had a deal with

Fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelve sp ...

. The show was originally titled ''Empire'', but producers could not secure the rights to the name and instead went with ''Platinum''. Ridley spoke of networks’ resistance to shows focused on

black culture Black culture refers to: * Culture of Africa * African-American culture * The culture of black communities in other parts of the world, see Black people See also * Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture The Schomburg Center for Resear ...

as the reason for the time it took for the series to air, saying, " Hip-hop is very multicultural and we want to make the show multicultural, but it's still ingrained in black culture and there's just not a lot of venues serving people of color. It's a struggle. A lot of networks are just ignoring a segment of the population."

Francis Ford Coppola Francis Ford Coppola (; ; born April 7, 1939) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is considered one of the major figures of the New Hollywood filmmaking movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Coppola is the recipient of five A ...

served an executive producer for the show. Ridley served as the primary

showrunner A showrunner (or colloquially a helmer) is the top-level executive producer of a television series production who has creative and management authority through combining the responsibilities of employer and, in comedy or dramas, typically also th ...

when Sofia Coppola left production to film '' Lost in Translation''.

Broadcast

''Platinum'' premiered on April 14, 2003 in the 9 p.m. time slot, with its second episode airing the following night. Episodes thereafter aired on Tuesday nights.

Critical reception

The series received critical acclaim, and on review aggregator

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, season one has an approval rating of 83% based on 12 reviews. Josh Friedman of the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

'' wrote, "The hip-hop industry saga ''Platinum'' feels as fresh and exhilarating as an HBO discovery, but, yep, that is broadcast TV you’re watching. The stylish, often-satirical hourlong drama sreminiscent of ''

The Sopranos ''The Sopranos'' is an American Crime film#Crime drama, crime drama television series created by David Chase. The story revolves around Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), a New Jersey-based American Mafia, Italian-American mobster, portraying h ...

'' and '' Six Feet Under'' in its wry portrayal of an unusual and cutthroat family business".

Alessandra Stanley Alessandra Stanley (born October 3, 1955 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American journalist. As of 2019, she is the co-founder of a weekly newsletter "for worldly cosmopolitans" called ''Air Mail'', alongside former ''Vanity Fair'' editor-in-ch ...

of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' said the series is "well made, imaginative and fun, and its willingness to explore new ground is particularly a credit to UPN". Writing for ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'',

James Poniewozik James "Jim" Poniewozik (; born July 12, 1968) is an American journalist and television critic. He is the chief TV critic for ''The New York Times''. Earlier in his career, he wrote ''Time'' magazine's ''Tuned In'' column for 16 years. Early life ...

said, "In the first episode, the show is adventurous and provocative enough to deserve a chance. In an easy-listening TV season, ''Platinum'' has got a beat, and you can think to it."

Cancelation

Despite strong reviews, ''Platinum'' was cancelled in May of 2003 for low ratings and high production costs. In a retrospective commentary,

Jon Caramanica Jon Caramanica (born 1975) is an American journalist and pop music critic who writes for ''The New York Times''. He is also known for writing about hip hop music. Biography Born in Brooklyn, New York (state), New York, Caramanica received his ba ...

of ''

'' said the show was a forerunner to the 2015 hit series ''

Empire An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...

'', which also concerned a family-owned hip-hop label. Caramanica called ''Platinum'' a rarity for its time as it was "an hour-length network drama revolving around black characters who came from a range of socio-economic and cultural backgrounds." He also praised the show for its depiction of female characters and "story lines

hat A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...

took hip-hop’s traditional masculinity to task."

References

External links

* * {{UPN UPN original programming 2000s American drama television series 2003 American television series debuts 2003 American television series endings English-language television shows Television shows set in New York City Television shows filmed in Toronto Television series created by John Ridley Television series by American Zoetrope Hip hop television Works about the music industry