‘Lil Kev’: Kevin Hart’s Latest TV Series Is Actually Quite Good

Kevin Hart likes to work. It’s presumably part of what has made him such a major crossover success in movies and TV after honing his stand-up career, and it’s certainly part of his whole brand—as borderline insufferable as any celebrity who loves to preach about the rise-and-grind lifestyle.

In the 2020s alone, Hart has starred in five live-action movies, two stand-up specials, his own multi-season talk show, a more serious-minded miniseries, and a ton of ads. Even his Quibi series was repurposed into a couple of re-edited Amazon movies, a feat both impressive and vaguely frightening. As such, an animated series based on Hart’s childhood experiences risks feeling like just another addition to his multimedia portfolio.

Given the sheer number of potential vanity projects available to a popular and grind-addicted comedian, however, Lil Kev has some retro charm, even if that throwback comes from a different era than the one it’s actually targeting.

This ’90s-set animated sitcom streaming on BET+ might superficially recall Everybody Hates Chris, the Chris Rock-narrated, ’80s-set family sitcom from the 2000s. But in addition to being far more foulmouthed than a network show, Lil Kev also brings to mind that same era’s Adult Swim cartoons—shows that gathered a cult following on late-night Cartoon Network.

The series follows a 12-year-old Kevin Hart (voiced by the grown-up comic) as he’s raised in a rough section of Philadelphia by his stern but caring mother Nancy (Wanda Sykes), with a haphazard assist from his just-out-of-prison uncle Richard Jr. (Deon Cole). Kevin’s father Henry (Slink Johnson), an irresponsible drunk, lurks on the outskirts of his life. The show’s treatment of Henry and Kevin’s marginal relationship is key to its tone: It’s more of a funny anecdote with hints of pathos than something genuinely fraught or sad. Michael Price, co-creator here alongside Everybody Hates Chris veteran Matthew Claybrooks, has experience in this realm as a Simpsons producer.

Lil Kev lacks the sheer joke-craft it would probably need for a truly devoted cult following. (Moreover, it’s occupying a vastly different TV landscape than the Adult Swim lineups of yore.) Some of the jokes leave a sour taste, and even some of its funnier bits are over-explanatory—punchlines that are supposed to sound rapid-fire in that classic Simpsons style but only make it halfway before tripping on their own feet. (In that sense, they’re live-action quips in an animated world.)

But the animation itself has a pleasing thick-line, graphic-caricature style that looks like a less gentrified version of the short-lived Mission Hill, another city-based cartoon from Simpsons alumni.

Neat animation in an age of careless YouTube blobs is a nice little surprise. The bigger one is that Lil Kev offers Hart one of his best roles in years.

It might sound backhanded to compliment an actor for playing his younger self, yet a mid-40s Hart isn’t necessarily the obvious choice to inhabit a 12-year-old kid. In doing so, Hart eases up on the most pugnacious, insistent side of his persona that comes on too strong in his movie comedies, as well as the self-aggrandizement that often creeps in when a comedian takes on more serious or personal material.

His excitability, scheming, and flailing exaggerations are all likable and endearing in a tweenage-protagonist-desperate-to-impress-his-crush way (even if it sometimes feels like the show wishes Kevin could be aged up or down as the episode requires). The result is a miniature version of Kevin Hart who is allowed to be both sillier and sweeter than some of his live-action variations.

When the show has to fill out its sitcom-length episodes with subplots (as it almost always does), it’s less successful. The sketch-y side characters have their moments, but their stories tend to feel like obligatory stuff to cut away to, rather than fully developed comic scenarios.

The contrast is even sharper when Kevin’s stories—inadvertently spending a day with his mom as she helps out a blatantly racist old white lady; investigating the theft of a classroom reading-marathon log that will earn the class a pizza party—have some genuinely original zip that really does feel like the product of lived experience. (Who hasn’t anticipated a classroom pizza party wildly out of proportion with its pleasures?)

Ultimately, that leaves Lil Kev as closer to half a good show, maybe two-thirds, rather than a full 10 episodes’ worth. Still, this is the first time in a while that the super-prolific Hart has left us wanting more.