The fourth season of Bounce TV’s most successful current TV show “Johnson” is back, featuring four Atlanta 30-something lifelong friends who all have the same last name but are not related.
Deji LaRay, the show’s creator who also plays aspiring chef Greg, has been thrilled by the fan support for the show, which is grounded heavily in the amusing interplay among the four friends. New episodes are now airing on Saturday nights on Bounce.
“The characters are becoming more emotionally intelligent,” LaRay said in a recent interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “They’re handing conflicts differently and learning from past mistakes.”
Each guy is different despite the common last name.
Omar (Thomas Q. Jones) plays an alpha tech guy struggling to work with a staff of young Gen Zers who care more about their mental health space than finishing an important project on a tight deadline. He also is trying to figure out co-parenting his son with his ex.
Keith (Phillip Smithey) is the naive, sensitive photographer who finds ways to say the wrong thing but found his true love. He is also running for an Atlanta city council seat against his girlfriend’s father.
Jarvis (Derrex Brady) is an ambitious real estate agent with a high-end clientele and a taste for the good life whose personal and work life both hit serious snags. And he finds being single a struggle.
LaRay’s Greg, until season 3, was kind of lost but he finally found purpose in cooking.
“People have become so emotionally invested in the characters,” LaRay said. “They come up to Thomas and me all the time and feel like they know us personally. It’s a testament to the relatability of the dialogue and situations they’re going through. The Johnson guys are anybody’s friend.”
In his mind, “Johnson” isn’t a drama or comedy. It’s simply a reflection of real life. “It’s important not to force it one way or another,” he said. “Let it be natural.”
D.L. Hughley, the veteran stand-up comic and actor, plays a radio host and Omar’s uncle, who pops in for three episodes. “He gives Omar sound advice,” Jones said. “He grounds him. And audiences love D.L.”
Bounce TV also gave “Johnson” the budget to spend two weeks in the Bahamas, partnering with the Atlantis Resort.
“We feel we earned Bounce’s trust after three seasons,” LaRay said. “We made it work.”
“Every classic show has a season where they go out of the country,” Jones added.
Bounce also gave Hulu the rights to the first three seasons of “Johnson.”
“It opens up a bigger world and attracts a new audience,” LaRay said. “It’s beneficial for both platforms.”
IF YOU WATCH
“Johnson,” 8 p.m. Saturdays on Bounce TV. First three seasons available on demand on Hulu
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Former Atlanta homicide detectives David Quinn and Vince Velazquez spent four seasons and 60 episodes on TV One reviewing old murder cases they had solved in Atlanta in a show appropriately called “ATL Homicide.”
Now they have expanded their scope to tell how other detectives find murderers in cases around the Southeast on a new TV One show called “Deadly Case Files,” with fresh episodes every Monday at 10 p.m.
Quinn and Velazquez are commentators and cheerleaders, interviewing the detectives and providing play by play as they solve the case. As is typical of true crime shows, the show blends real audio and video footage with actors re-enacting the murder, the investigation and the interrogations.
“We pick their brains to see what their process is,” Quinn added.
They also talk to Atlanta detectives who worked under their tutelage before both men retired from the Atlanta Police Department in the mid-2010s. One example is the third episode’s Calvin Thomas, the lead detective trying to solve the 2015 Old Fourth Ward murder of Tyna Bass, a woman whose body was found in a curbside trash can.
Thomas himself lost an aunt to murder in 2003, a case Quinn and Velazquez helped solve and was eerily similar to this new case.
“We made her death matter and we put that person in prison for killing his aunt,” Velazquez said in the episode.
The investigation has more than one potential suspect.
“There are a lot of red herrings,” Quinn said.
IF YOU WATCH
“Deadly Case Files,” 10 p.m. Mondays on TV One.
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