Will Smith made The Fresh Prince a 90s icon, and now Jabari Banks reboots the same role for a 2022 audience. Critic Travis Johnson proclaims: “yo homes, to Bel-Air!”
Now this is a story all about how a guy, Morgan Cooper, made a fan trailer for a hypothetical reboot of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, the sitcom that made Will Smith a star. This new version sold the show as a straight drama, no longer beholden to the situation comedy form.
The twist is that Smith himself saw it, dug it, and commissioned a full series. And so now Cooper, who must surely be thanking his lucky stars and patron saints every day of his life, is the showrunner of Bel-Air, as well as directing and co-writing its first episode.
You know how this goes: the fictional Will Smith (Jabari Banks), a promising basketball player in the West Philadelphia slums, is sent off to live with wealthy relatives the Bankses in Los Angeles after a fight on the court makes his mother nervous. Here she has every right to be—Will, more or less justified, pulled a gun on a drug dealer, so the threat of jail or death is real.
In the swanky enclave of wealth and privilege, his street smarts and flip style often put him at odds with his uncle Phil (Adrian Holmes), a successful lawyer, and cousin Carlton (Olly Sholotan), an insecure preppy, but he gets on well with his Aunt Vivian (Cassandra Freeman), and cousins Hilary (Coco Jones) and Ashley (Akira Akbar). Nonetheless, there’s plenty of culture clash material to be mined for comedy.
Or, in this case, drama. The basic premise can be used for either, really, and even the original show went to some dark and dramatic places on the reg: Will got shot at one point, he and Carlton were hassled by racist cops, his deadbeat dad flitted in and out of his life. Tonally, the OG Bel-Air kept it light and frothy, though, only occasionally whipping the rug out from under us with some real talk. With this new take, the drama—much of it race based—is forwarded.
Will objects to Carlton giving his rich, white friends N-word privileges. Hilary, reimagined here as a foodie influencer, wrestles with being asked to tone down her recipes for a more “mainstream” (that’ll be white) palate. Uncle Phil, embarking on a campaign for district attorney, worries how the presence of the guileless Will is going to affect his image. And so on.
That last one is interesting, because Bel-Air and its predecessor traffic in issues of class as well as race. You can see Phil and Vivian, herself from blue collar stock, fret about how Will is disrupting their lives, and about what they, as upper class Black professionals, may owe a less privileged family member (Carlton, here a far more antagonistic presence, straight-up hates Will).
This is tricky territory to navigate, but three episodes deep it’s doing so rather deftly, with Phil forced to wonder if he’s sacrificed authenticity in pursuit of success. He gets to use house manager (he was the butler back in the day) Geoffrey (Jimmy Akingbola) as a sounding board for his worries, and given the Jamaican-by-way-of-London Geoffrey in this version gives off a real “I have a particular set of skills” vibe, his advice is probably worth heeding.
Where all this is going is a bit up for grabs at this point, though. The advantage of the sitcom format is that it’s all about the situation and how that allows for comedy, and each episode is a self-contained little plot (Will gets hustled by pool sharks, Phil’s parents visit, whatever). Bel-Air is leaning into the modern prestige TV longform format, with Uncle Phil’s election campaign seemingly the main story spine. But so far while the details, characters, and relationships are interesting, the plot is not.
It is charming, though, and that counts for a lot. The risk in making The Fresh Prince into a drama is that it’ll tip into self-parody, losing any sense of identity in a quest to talk about The Big Issues. Bel-Air, to its credit, resists that. It’s not a straight up comedy, but there are laughs to be had.
And although he can’t compete with the phenomenally charismatic Will Smith (remember, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was essentially nothing but narrative scaffolding built to channel Smith’s ridiculously potent appeal), the new prince Jabari Banks has at least some of that same easy swagger. Whether this all adds up to something is hard to say at this juncture, but it’s definitely worth sticking around to find out.
