Genius: Aretha Goes Surface Deep on the Queen of Soul | TV/Streaming

Which isn’t to deny that Erivo (who has won an Emmy, Tony, and Grammy, and was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actress and Best Original Song for 2019’s “Harriet”) is a phenomenally talented singer who puts her own spin on many of these songs. She has commanding stage presence, and in every one of the seven episodes provided for review, she steps onstage or into a recording studio and makes it her own. Aretha flashes her genius (get it?!) as she sings songs back note by note after hearing them one time, plays piano by ear without knowing how to read music, arranges every aspect of each track, and sings “Don’t Play That Song (You Lied)” and “Rock Steady” under Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler’s (David Cross) watchful eye. She charismatically dazzles while grooving and shimmying along to “See Saw” for a TV performance. She digs deep into her talent when she gets up behind the pulpit at church and soars through gospel mainstays “Amazing Grace” and “Never Grow Old” before a crowd of weeping, exalting parishioners. Those scenes are lively, joyous, shot with verve by directors Neema Barnette and Anthony Hemingway (when they’re not using corny visual effects, like running this footage through a filter to make it look like Erivo’s Aretha is taking up every frame in a film strip), and most importantly, they center Aretha. 

But “Genius: Aretha” isn’t a concert, it’s a TV show, and acting isn’t the same thing as singing, and the series derails itself over and over again by jumping back and forth and refusing to tell a linear story. Each episode is named after one of Franklin’s songs (“Respect,” “Until the Real Thing Comes Along,” “Do Right Woman,” “Unforgettable,” “Young, Gifted and Black,” “Amazing Grace,” “Chain of Fools,” and “No One Sleeps”), the seven provided for review span the early 1940s to late 1970s. In premiere “Respect,” Franklin is struggling professionally and personally. Although she was named the “Queen of Soul,” she’s trying to break into pop and find her “own sound,” a phrase that comes up constantly. (As does “our people,” whenever the show addresses the civil rights movement and the Black community.) Her father, who is convinced that her voice is a gift from God specifically for him, and withdrew her from school and ushered her into singing as soon as he could, is battling with Ted, her decade-older husband, over her career. Each of them uses Aretha, and they’re essentially arguing over who gets to control her more. And to contextualize every scene in Franklin’s adulthood with some traumatic event from her past, “Genius: Aretha” travels back in time to inform us of her mother’s tragic death, her father’s heavy drinking and infidelity, and Franklin’s compromised innocence.

Episodes tend to skip over major events and instead briefly focus on their fallout, or advance forward by months and years to when characters have already worked out the issues that were just introduced. Some scenes are identified by date, while others aren’t, forcing viewers to guess timelines based on fashions and hairstyles. This approach underserves both Erivo and newcomer Shaian Jordan, who plays “Re” as a child and young teenager. Both speak in grand statements, but not revealing ones: “I want to be of service” and “I want to lend my voice,” not “I feel” or “I think.” Scenes focus on their subjugation (child Re seeing her father engage in a threesome while on the gospel caravan tour where she is later drugged and raped; adult Re being punched in the face by Ted the same night she is named the Queen of Soul), but not the inner processes that inspire their choices, their loves, or their fears.