5 reasons we're obsessed with Emperor of Ocean Park

Sherman Payne (executive story editor for the US series Shameless) based the crime thriller series Emperor of Ocean Park on the first book in Stephen L Carter’s best-selling Elm Harbor novel series (2002-2008). The books centre on the Garland family as they navigate race and class issues in the United States, between the worlds of politics, Ivy League academia, and the beaches of Martha’s Vineyard.

In the story, Ivy League law professor Talcott Garland (Grantham Coleman, Edwin Jones in Lawmen: Bass Reeves and Ronnie Mathis in Power Book III: Raising Kanan Season 3) faces a daunting battle with family after his father, politically conservative Judge Oliver Garland (Forest Whitaker, with Omar Miller as the young Oliver Garland), dies of a heart attack shortly after failing his bid to join the Supreme Court. And Tal’s sister Mariah (Tiffany Mack), a journalist-turned-conspiracy-theorist, believes that he was murdered.

Or for fans of the drama series Bel-Air, imagine if Uncle Phil died after going “crazy” and becoming a talking head for the Fox News network, but left Carlton a series of cryptic clues in his will, and Hilary insisted that he’d been murdered.

Here’s why we’re obsessed…

Binge Emperor of Ocean Park now.

Watch the trailer for Emperor of Ocean Park

1. Mystery, chess, and “the final arrangements” 

Prepare to feast on breadcrumb trails, red herrings, and the whole murder-mystery smorgasbord. There’s a chess master at work! In both the book and the series, Judge Garland is an avid player and raised his children with the game. Before he dies, he leaves Tal a cryptic message that tasks him with the top secret job of taking care of “the final arrangements” and ends in the words, "Excelsior, my son! Excelsior! It begins!". 

The “final arrangements” refers to a series of chess moves. Clues using chess pieces have been set up for Tal to interpret, and two important pieces are already in play: Jack Ziegler (Torrey Hanson), who’s a mysterious friend of the family, and Tal’s sister Abby Garland (Avery Holliday), who died in a car accident a few years back.

Sherman Payne had previously worked on a script for a series about a young Black Harlem chess team. But for the fine points of the moves, he brought in Chris Vanderark, a ranked player in the Continental Chess Association, as Emperor of Ocean Park’s chess consultant. It was game-on for Forest Whitaker too, since he’s played chess since the age of 10 and has even trained under chess masters, and used this for an earlier role in the series Godfather of Harlem, which used his character’s chess skill to symbolise his strategic mind. 

2. Forest Whitaker? Yes, please

Judge Oliver Garland is a complicated and compromised character with a horde of skeletons in his closet. From his conservative politics, to his job with the Fox News team, to his role as a father who rules his family with an iron fist, he’s a force to be reckoned with. And while he’s told his family one story about why he declined a seat on the Supreme Court, the truth is a lot darker. 

There are shades of the domestic dictator in Judge Garland’s angry, domineering, demanding personality. So the role is practically hand-tailored for Forest, who brought both charm and terrifying force to his multiple-award-winning role as dictator Idi Amin in the 2006 film The Last King of Scotland. For that role, he went all-out, learning everything from how to play the accordion and speak Swahili, to meeting with Idi Amin’s friends, relatives, generals, and victims. 

Forest is also familiar with Judge Garland’s political world through his work as an activist and speaking on behalf of Senator Barack Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign. On the academic side, he’s a senior research scholar at Rutgers University. And his work for the International Institute for Peace (which he co-founded) has earned him international acclaim, including the title of chief among the Igbo of Nkwerre, where he holds the title Nwannedinamba of Nkwerre (A Brother in a Foreign Land).

3. A view of Black wealth, class and privilege in the US

There are few on-screen depictions of the United States’ rich, powerful Black families. Bel-Air Season 1-3 addresses the limits of privilege in the face of racism and conservatism in the US, as it focuses on the wealthy and politically influential Banks family living in the exclusive suburb of Bel-Air in Los Angeles. The family patriarch is a judge, so for fun, try mapping the Garland family onto the Banks family – it’s almost an exact match!

Reality series Summer House: Martha’s Vineyard Season 2 shows the Black elite at play in one of New York’s most exclusive beach resorts – which is a major focus in Emperor of Ocean Park. Comedy series Run the World Season 2 centres Black professional women and their friendships and dating lives. And historically, The Gilded Age Seasons 1-2 gives us an extremely rare glimpse of the Black elite during the late 1800s, through the character of Peggy Scott (Denée Benton) who comes from a rich New York family.

In Emperor of Ocean Park, Tal Garland will have to navigate the impact of what he learns not just within the family, but on his father’s legacy in their community, where he’s a respected symbol of Black success in the face of racial prejudice. Judge Garland’s success and privilege have also sheltered his children from the impact of prejudice that poorer Black communities suffer to the point that his daughter Mariah (Tiffany Mack) has adopted his conservative attitudes and believes that if hard work results in success, then unsuccessful Black people just aren’t working hard enough. 

In real life, author Stephen Carter rooted his Elm Harbor novels in his own experiences. He’s a law professor at Yale Law School (currently the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale) – which is the inspiration for Tal Garland’s university, Elm Harbor. His father was a vice president at Cornell University, while his grandmother, Eunice Hunton Carter, was the first Black woman to be a district attorney in New York state. And his great grandmother, Addie Waites Hunton, was a famous suffragette and activist for women’s rights.

4. Real-life Black conservatism

Stephen L Carter’s Elm Harbor novels were written between 2002 and 2008, which feels like a vastly different time in politics in the United States. So Sherman Payne had to adapt and update the material, which meant wrestling with how to depict Black conservatives in a post-Obama, post-Trump world without having people point fingers at real-life Black conservatives like Clarence Thomas, or Candace Owens. 

As a result, Sherman shifted the series focus on conservatism to how it is reflected within the Garland family. Judge Garland raised his children as a distant, rigid and exacting father. Despite the damage this caused, his kids also grew up with an elite level of (imperfect) privilege. In episode 5, writer Cynthia Adarkwa has Judge Garland talk to Tal about his own experiences being a young Black man, and the challenges that Black men in America face in how to navigate that world. It’s done lovingly and with the best of intentions, but through the lens of his conservative politics. 

Mariah, especially, gives us a rare look inside Black conservative women’s lives. To understand her issues on a more personal level, Sherman spoke to his wife about her experiences after she shifted from a highly successful career, to becoming a full-time mother and housekeeper during the pandemic. 

An intelligent, driven, Pulitzer Prize-winning professional journalist, Mariah left her career behind to become something of a Trad Wife – in line with her father’s ideals for women. The frustration that causes is part of what drives her to insist that Judge Garland was murdered, before setting out to prove it herself. 

5. The legal drama

Stephen L Carter based the legal and political topics in the book – including the workings of the FBI, how judges are appointed to the Supreme Court, and how judges are subject to and conduct political lobbying  – on his published academic texts, including The Confirmation Mess, The Culture of Disbelief, Civility, and Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby.

As the actor playing Tal, Coleman drew on his real-life experiences as the son of a lawyer who became a judge. He portrays Tal as someone who’s uncomfortable with the reverence people give to his father. He harbours doubts about this wisdom of idolising Judge Garland as an idol of positive representation – which is itself an uncomfortable reminder of the real power dynamics at work in their society. 

Tal, who’s already struggling with what he knows about ethics and the law in the United States, is going to be further challenged by the reality of what he uncovers about not only his father’s conduct as a judge, but by what it reflects about a system that’s rotten to the core. 

In a demonstration of the great unspoken conservative value – "rules for thee but not for me" hypocrisy – while Judge Garland preached the values of honour, duty, justice, and playing by the rules to his kids, he secretly owed his success to the much baser values of cronyism, looking the other way, and graft. So once some very important people find out about “the final arrangements”, the judge’s children won’t be the only ones looking for answers and truths to bury.

Binge Emperor of Ocean Park now.