Beauty in black is the first series that Tyler Perry has created under his contract with Netflix after a handful of feature films. Series that Perry writes, directs and produces aren't exactly known for their subtle dialogue or nuanced themes, but perhaps a series about the intersection of two women's very different lives will change that.

Opening shot: A woman walks down the hallway of a well-appointed house.

The essentials: The pilot’s “Who, what, where, when, why?”

What shows will it remind you of? Kimmie (Taylor Polidore Williams) is a sex worker who lives in the home of a very wealthy and influential client, but that client, Calvin (Shannon Wallace), insults and threatens her because she doesn't look “classy” enough.

Kimmie and her friend Rain (Amber Reign Smith) were forced into sex work, working for a pimp named Jules (Charles Malik Whitfield) after they were caught with drugs at the airport. Calvin is so powerful in Chicago that he can send both of them back to prison with one phone call.

They also dance in a strip club, which is also part of sex work. Before Kimmie leaves for work one evening, she takes Rain to a hotel where Mallory Bellaire (Crystle Stewart), CEO of the hair care company Beauty In Black, is awarding scholarships to her beauty school and a $1 million prize to a select salon. Kimmie has applied for a scholarship, hoping it will give her a way out of the endless cycle of working for Jules. Rain thinks it's a pipe dream and says, “At some point you have to face the fact that we're sluts. That’s all we’re going to be.”

Mallory came from a humble background; She tells the audience that a foster mother took her on a modeling search, where she was discovered by the Bellaire family. She ended up marrying into it, but wanted to use the money to start the hair care business, which has now become a huge success.

Kimmie arrives late at the club, where she is dressed up by Delinda (Ursula O. Robinson), who is in charge of the girls, and Body (Tamera “Tee” Pillow), a stripper who collects and enforces Delinda's feelings. She is sent to the VIP room, where she immediately insults the wealthy customer (Rico Ross) when she notices him looking at a male stripper behind the curtain.

After the lecture, Mallory is served with a lawsuit about her company's carcinogenic hair straightening. As soon as she gets into her SUV, her demeanor changes, berating her security guard, insulting her assistant and complaining that the woman who won the $1 million will probably spend the money on crack. She throws her employees out of the SUV and drives home herself. On the way home she runs into someone in the pouring rain and ends up driving away.

Meanwhile, Body arranges for Rain to get butt implants right in the motel room where she and Kimmie live. They have been friends since Kimmie was kicked out of her house at age 17. Her mother said she was too tempting a target for the man living with them. Rain met her in the bathroom of a Walmart where Kimmie was hiding.

What shows will it remind you of? Tyler Perry's Beauty In Black reminds us of the South African series Wild beauty.

Our opinion: Perry wrote and directed Beauty in blackand the proceedings are quite grim, but also entirely predictable. Kimmie and Rain are stuck in a cycle of constantly owing money to Jules so he can consign them to sex work for as long as possible. And while Kimmie seems to have ambitions beyond what she's doing now, she seems to be so deeply in debt to people like Jules and Calvin that there seems to be no way out.

And while we saw Mallory being kind and generous to the crowd gathered at her talk, we knew that once she was behind closed doors, she would become just as offensive, rude a figure as Jules. Calvin, and it seems like everyone is at the strip club. We've never heard the words “bitch” and “money” more times in 43 minutes than we did in the first episode of this show, and we've been reviewing shows like P-Talwhich revolve around strip clubs and sex work.

At least in the first episode, this story seems to have very little subtlety or nuance. There are some nuances in Williams' performance as Kimmie, particularly in a scene where Kimmie can barely hold back her tears as she returns to Calvin's house to please him once again. But most of Kimmie's facial expressions just make her look like she's unhappy. Everyone else essentially screams their roles, because almost every line involves someone verbally abusing others.

Look, we get it; This is Perry's idea of ​​what this world is about. But we wonder if Perry was the right person to write such a story. If the story were written by women, or perhaps not by a media mogul who became a billionaire through Madea films and silly family sitcoms, perhaps the story would be more subtle.

Gender and skin: Lots of both.

Parting shot: Predictably, the butt implants didn't go well and Kimmie finds Rain lying unconscious in her motel room with bloodstained towels everywhere.

Sleeperstar: As predictable as Mallory's character is, we give credit to Crystle Stewart for managing to make the behind-the-scenes version of Mallory believable.

Most Pilot-y Lines: There are a lot of awkward lines, but what struck us the most is that in flashbacks, a completely different actress plays 17-year-old Kimmie, but the actress playing Rain is the same. That couldn't have been that long ago; Why not just let Williams play young Kimmie?

Our call: SKIP IT. Tyler Perry's Beauty In Black is as subtle as a slap in the face, and we're surprised we didn't see it in the dark, insult-filled first episode.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and technology, but he's not kidding himself: He's a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.comFast Company and elsewhere.