Kevin Hart has pretty firmly established himself as your favorite rapper's favorite comedian, trading Instagram barbs with Drake and Meek Mill and watching models' hair catch on fire with Diddy. But, despite his hugely successful stand-up career and his ubiquity at the box office, it's not until I began watching his faux-reality show Real Husbands of Hollywood that I finally began to really understand him as a comedian. The BET show, in which he plays a reality TV version of himself, flips the "real housewives" concept on its head and focuses instead on Hart and his crew of "husbands."
It's a hilariously meta and self-aware tour of black Hollywood, anchored by Hart's frenemy-ship with Nick Cannon, Nelly, Boris Kodjoe, and Duane Martin. So far, guest stars have included Mariah Carey, Conan O'Brien, Bobby Brown, Erykah Badu, and several dozen other celebrities who pop up unexpectedly and are used to absurd effect. The show averages a million viewers per episode, but it feels somewhat siloed, and doesn't receive the media attention and pop culture discourse it deserves. Once you look past the farcical plot points and slapstick-y comedy, Real Husbands zooms in on some of the most relevant issues of the day: fame, celebrity culture, and human interaction in the age of social media. You can watch the first two seasons on Netflix now and the third, which just aired its finale episode last week, is watchable on BET's website.
Photo credit: Ethan Miller / Getty Images
