Mission possible: Spy caper casting a change for network TV

Steven and Samantha Bloom are an appealing couple whose international spy capers on NBC's "Undercovers" promise to be slick, sexy and fun, the kind of escapist fare that fills many an hour of TV.

But the new show's intrigue comes from its casting along with its plots: Boris Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw are the stars, and both are black.

It's a persistent rarity in TV to have black leads outside of a "Grey's Anatomy"-style ensemble, and "Undercovers" is rarer still because it's not an African-American sitcom or a black-oriented drama fraught with social issues.

This time around, two stunning, accomplished and happily wed black characters just get to have fun. The series airs 7 p.m. Wednesdays.

"It's huge progress," said writer and filmmaker John Ridley ("Three Kings," "Third Watch"). "As a person of color I love to see issue-oriented stuff, but at the same time, it's great to have two black people doing what two white people would do on any TV show."

Kodjoe, a German actor whose credits include the new movie "Resident Evil: Afterlife" and TV's "Soul Food," is glad to be part of a breakthrough for U.S. television and the network.

NBC, which pioneered the first network drama series starring an African-American, "I Spy" with Bill Cosby in 1965, got a tongue-lashing this year from a California congresswoman for its lack of diversity. The network and parent company NBC Universal are under scrutiny as Comcast Corp. seeks regulatory approval to buy a majority stake in NBC Universal.

The decision to broaden the casting net beyond white actors resulted from the inclination and clout of J.J. Abrams, whose heavyweight credits include "Lost" and "Alias," and fellow producer Josh Reims ("Brothers and Sisters").

"We didn't want to do a show that looks like 10 other shows on TV. ... We just wanted to do something that felt fresh," Reims said. Various actors were considered but "we thought if we could cast two black actors it would be great."

In the end, Reims said, the best choices proved to be Kodjoe, 37, and Mbatha-Raw, 27, a British-born, stage-trained actress who starred on Broadway with Jude Law in "Hamlet" and on TV in "Doctor Who."

Mbatha-Raw, who like Kodjoe employs an impeccable American accent in "Undercovers," was unaware that black actors faced long odds for certain U.S. television roles. Her experience in Britain has been different.

"To be honest, I've been really blessed to play ethnically specific and non-ethnically specific roles" back home, she said.

As for the NBC series, "It's nice that it's groundbreaking but it shouldn't be in this day and age," she says.

Kodjoe agrees. The entertainment industry needs to "make choices that are creative and real and diverse," he said.

He was initially reluctant to read for "Undercovers" because he'd lost too many jobs when producers who praised his audition later informed him their show needed to go "in another direction." Invariably, that meant a white actor had won the role, Kodjoe said.

It's the sidekicks on "Undercovers" who are white, played by Carter MacIntyre and Ben Schwartz. Gerald McRaney is the Blooms' boss, Carlton Shaw, who brings the couple back to work for the CIA five years after they quit to enjoy a routine married life and run a business (a catering company, which becomes their cover).

The caper genre has found a comfortable home on TV, especially in recent years on cable, with USA Network's "Burn Notice" and TNT's "Leverage" in the pack that feature mostly white leads with a minority cast member or two. Black-headlined fare of that and nearly every other stripe has long been a tough sell on TV.

Acclaimed actor James Earl Jones has been in several short-lived series, most notably the 1995 family drama "Under One Roof." "Snoops," a detective series starring Tim Reid and wife Daphne Maxwell Reid, debuted in 1989 and was gone after just a few months. Reid's critically praised "Frank's Place" (1988) didn't fare better.

This time around, will viewers dig "Undercovers"?

A long-standing rule in series development is to avoid making a program "exclusionary," said former TV executive and historian Tim Brooks.

"When you have a program almost entirely in a black setting, white viewers feel that's not their world," Brooks said.

There's typically an exemption for sitcoms, which can draw a multiracial audience with all-black casts (examples abound, ranging from "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" to Cosby's comedies). But dramas about relationships hit closer to home, Brooks said.

Filmmaker Ridley doesn't buy that thinking. Largely white Hollywood decision-makers simply are drawn to projects and characters they're familiar with, he contends, and it takes an influential producer such as Abrams to bring change. And, Kodjoe notes, do it well.

"Josh Reims and J.J. Abrams are genius writers and that's what it comes down to. The rest is really up to the audience," he said.