Live at Five
by By Haynes, David
Category: Fiction , General

In Live at Five, Haynes turns our expectations of television and ourselves upside down through the story of several remarkable people on both sides of the camera. Brandon Wilson anchors a television newscast that is regularly trounced by reruns of "The Facts of Life." When a new producer, hell-bent on raising channel 13's ratings, decides that his middle-class African-American anchor with a penthouse isn't "black" enough, he has a brainstorm: Brandon is to redefine himself by doing a series from a new home in the inner city. There Brandon meets Nita, who manages an apartment building in addition to juggling three kids, night school, and a job.Brandon sees his move as a Faustian bargain that allows him to tell the stories of "real folks." But when the station demands something more sensational, Brandon and Nita find their loyalties caught up in a media circus that only Nita can find a way to tame.With hilarious takes on class, color, and our obsession with seeing ourselves on TV - even if we don't recognize what we see - Live at Five skillfully dissects our media-saturated times. Nita and Brandon wonderfully demonstrate that human lives cannot be captured in sound bites, and that the real story is what happens in our everyday lives.