Stream It Or Skip It?

One of the things that we’ve enjoyed about Tiffany Haddish‘s career since her meteoric rise after the film Girls Trip is that, because the meteoric rise was 20 years in the making, she has a good perspective on where she came from. She’s generous with her time and money, and open minded to doing and talking about things that may not jibe with the persona she became known for from the movie eight years ago. All of that is present on her new reality series, Tiffany Haddish Goes Off, and it makes the show go beyond the usual reality travel fare.

Opening Shot: Tiffany Haddish tells a producer that she thought that the girls’ trip that she went on would be full of massages and some sex. But “it was so much more than that.”

The Gist: In Tiffany Haddish Goes Off, the comedian goes on a four-week girls’ trip to four countries in Africa. Accompanying her are three of her best “day one” friends, as she calls them: Selena Martin, Shermona Long and Sparkle Clark (Shermona’s younger sister). These are people who have known Tiffany for decades, well before she became famous; they helped her through her toughest times as she struggled to make it in comedy.

They’re not exactly roughing it, as they see when they get to Cape Town, South Africa. A huge luxury house, complete with a staff and a cook, awaits them when they arrive from Los Angeles. The day after they arrive, they get on a boat and are put in a shark cage. The crew shovels chum into the cage to help attract sharks, to they come up to the cage (the cage hangs off the side of the boat, so the ladies aren’t underwater).

There’s some discussion about Haddish wishing her ex-boyfriend Common and his new girlfriend, Jennifer Hudson, well when he says in an interview he thinks he’ll get married to J.Hud. The friends actually liked Common for Tiffany, given that he was a mature person who had his own success. “This is part of why I’m keeping my legs closed,” Tiffany tells the producers, citing that she wants to be in a real relationship and not just get involved with people she’s attracted to.

Everyone but Sparkle — who thinks she swallowed too much sea water — go to a comedy club to meet Celeste Ntuli, a top standup in South Africa. After her set, Celeste invites Tiffany to do a set on stage, and Tiffany can’t resist a chance to work out material. Her first joke bombs, and she feels a little lost, mainly because, as she tells her buddies later, most of her material has references that would likely go over the heads of people not from the US. But she does meet a cute comedian named Primo, and he brings his boys to the house the next day, and they all go to the club the next night.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Tiffany Haddish Goes Off is similar to The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls’ Trip, except for the fact that the girls Haddish goes on her trip with are actually her friends.

Our Take: The old friend vibe that Tiffany, Shermona, Sparkle and Selena give off can’t be recreated, even by savvy reality show producers. They all know each other’s secrets and as Tiffany says, “where the bodies are buried.” Tiffany knows that she can trust them; they don’t treat her like a celebrity because they knew her decades before she became one.

While the adventures we saw in the first episode had more of a luxury travel vibe that perhaps doesn’t really give a good feel for what the quartet experienced in South Africa, we hope that going forward, they’ll have experiences that are more integrated into the fabric of whatever town, village and nation they visit. It seems like there’s that potential, given the first-season highlights played at the end of the episode. And it also seems like there won’t be a heck of a lot of fake conflict, which is a nice change.

Sex and Skin: Tiffany and Sparkle are both single, and it seems like Selena and Shermona will be happy to see them both hook up on this trip. But it’s not like they’re actually going to show any of them having sex with anyone.

Parting Shot: Tiffany has a lot of fun with Primo at the club.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to all three of Tiffany’s friends: Shermona, Sparkle and Selena, because we like seeing the people that a celeb like Tiffany knew way back when, who aren’t afraid to call her out on things.

Most Pilot-y Line: This isn’t a bad thing, but when Sparkle begged off the night at the comedy club, she looked so cozy in her bed that we thought we probably would have done the same thing.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Tiffany Haddish Goes Off shines because the comedian goes on a trip of a lifetime with her actual friends, and decades of memories and history together inform everything they do on this trip.

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.