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With ‘Government Cheese,’ Apple TV+ vaults into 1960s San Fernando Valley

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Set in a version, or a vision, of the northwest San Fernando Valley in 1969, “Government Cheese,” premiering Wednesday on Apple TV+, belongs to a class of visually striking comic dramas that slip in out of the naturalistic “real” world, while remaining emotionally coherent. I’m thinking of “Lodge 49” with which this show shares an … Read more

‘Government Cheese’ stays outside the box with a surreal Black family in the Valley

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When Paul Hunter started shopping around his script for an autobiographical movie called “Government Cheese,” about a Black family living a surreal life in the San Fernando Valley during the late 1960s, he kept getting variations on the same rejection: We don’t know any Black people like this. These aren’t Black characters that we’ve ever … Read more