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The Express Way With Dulé Hill is a four-part docuseries where the Psych and The Wonder Years star goes to different parts of the country and shows how people connect to each other via the arts. During the first season, Hill visits a diverse set of artists in California, Appalachia, Texas and Chicago.
Opening Shot: On the top of a hill with downtown Los Angeles in the background, actor/dancer Dulé Hill puts on a purple pair of tap shoes. He then takes a board out to the middle of the street and tap dances.
The Gist: In the first episode, three artists in California are profiled. In the Fairfax neighborhood of Los Angeles, we meet Shaheem Sanchez, a dancer who lost his hearing when he was four years old. But music has always been in his life, thanks to his mother, and he dances to the vibrations created by the beat of a particular song. He demonstrates a little of the process of how he feels a song and starts creating moves based on that feel. He is also an instructor who teaches both hearing and hearing-impaired students, and incorporates ASL into the dance moves he teaches. He and Hill then dances with a group called Infinite Flow, many of whose members have disabilities.
Hill then travels to San Francisco to visit with Cynthia Yee, who has been dancing in Chinatown clubs in the city since she was a teenager in the 1960s. She’s part of a group called The Grant Avenue Follies, which is populated with women in their sixties on up; they tell Hill that he’s going to dance with them in that night’s show, which pays tribute to the first Miss Chinatown. We also meet Clara Su, who found herself writing poetry after her somewhat oppressive marriage falls apart.
Then Hill is back in Los Angeles to talk to Carlos Samaniego, who founded Mariachi Arcoiris, the world’s first LGBTQ+ mariachi band. Mariachi has always been known as not only a male tradition, but it has always had a macho, cisgender, straight vibe to it that didn’t welcome Carlos or other members of the LGBTQIA+ community. He meets Carols’ husband as well as his best friend, Natalia Melendez, the first openly trans woman in professional mariachi.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The format of The Express Way With Dulé Hill is similar to that of shows like Taste The Nation With Padma Lakshmi. Only here Hill is showing how people in the U.S. connect with each other via the arts.
Our Take: What struck us the most about The Express Way is that it’s not your typical PBS docuseries, with its more traditional mix of clips and interviews, with a deep-voiced narrator that is usually either Peter Coyote or Keith David (perhaps we’ve seen one too many Ken Burns series in this case). It definitely has more of a similar feel to a streaming or basic cable docuseries, where the star and narrator is an active participant, and we get to live those experiences through his or her reactions.
Hill makes for a personable and warm host in this capacity; during the segments where he’s directly interacting with the people that are being profiled, he’s happy to be there, loves to hear the stories the profilees tell, and is willing to jump in and participate to connect with the vibe and purpose of the art they create. We especially loved seeing Hill dancing with the ladies in The Grant Avenue Follies, because it showed he was open to experiencing someone’s art rather than just observing it.
Ultimately, a show like this is designed to expose you to people and art that you may not have known about. None of the people in this first episode are unknowns; they’ve gotten press attention and are well-represented on social media. But giving them a national platform is always helpful, and The Express Way gives worthy artists the platform to expand their worthy messages.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Hill dances with Shaheem Sanchez as Sanchez shows him how he builds his dance moves without being able to hear the music.
Sleeper Star: Everyone told great stories about what they’ve had to overcome to get to this point in their lives, but we loved Natalia Melendez’ story about how her conservative father told her on his deathbed that “you’re my prettiest daughter.”
Most Pilot-y Line: Hill is a fantastic tap dancer. But the tap dancing interstitials are a bit gratuitous after awhile.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The Express Way With Dulé Hill does an effective job of connecting the artists that the show profiles to the viewer, and giving them a real chance to show why they do what they do.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
