Tonight at 10 p.m. ET/CT, BET is serving up something it has never tried before. “Her Baby” premieres as four weekly half-hour installments in a horizontal format on linear television. If you’ve been scrolling past vertical microdramas on your phone and wondering when somebody would make one with us in mind, class is in session!!
The setup is simple and nasty in the best way. The show follows Naomi and Cory Marsh as they prepare for their child with help from Imani, a surrogate who seems almost too good to be true. Imani starts out like family, warm and devoted, and moves in to help. Then Naomi begins suspecting the woman carrying her baby wants far more than she’s letting on. Anybody who has ever watched a smile that stayed a beat too long already knows where this is headed.
The cast is the reason to clear your Wednesday night. Mia Reese plays Naomi, Brandon McGee is Cory, and Destyni Hannah Cooper plays Imani. A thriller like this lives or dies on whether the audience believes the tension between the two women, and the trailer suggests the pressure is already simmering before anyone says a word.
aTwist is not a random startup. It was founded by Jana Winograde, formerly president of Showtime, Susan Rovner, a former NBCUniversal Content chairman, and Lloyd Braun, the ex-ABC Entertainment chairman.
BET execs are talking big, too. Aisha Summers-Burke, who heads creative at BET Studios, said “BET is planting our stake in the ground for the next era of storytelling.” The founders of aTwist, in a joint statement, framed it as “a scalable pipeline for cross-platform storytelling.” Corporate speak aside, the point is clear. The partners say Black audiences remain largely underserved in the microdrama world, and they plan more programming aimed at us.
For now, the move is simple. Tune in tonight, tell your group chat to hold their spoilers, and pay attention to Imani’s every move. Four episodes is not much time for a story about a baby, a marriage, and a secret, so expect it to move fast. Cable TV just got a shot of vertical-video energy, and a surrogate who may or may not be the villain is leading the charge.
#Socialites, are you watching? Let us know in the comment box below!