Oprah Winfrey’s OWN Network just released the trailer to its upcoming drama The Kings of Napa.
The show tells the story of the Kings, an upwardly mobile Black family who run a successful Napa Valley vineyard that has brought them success and media attention. The main protagonist is August King (Ebonée Noel), the middle child who’s “passionate about wine and always looking for new ways to expand the business,” according to OWN’s press release.
August, her older brother Dana (Rance Nix), and younger brother Christian (Ashlee Brian) have their own ideas about the future of the business when patriarch Reginald (Isiah Whitlock Jr.), who runs the winery with his wife Vanessa (Karen LeBlanc), steps aside. The ensuing power struggle serves as the core of the show’s narrative.
The trailer has all the trappings of a classic Black soap opera, including familial betrayal, grand ambition and even a feisty auntie to serve as comic relief – all set to the backdrop of Northern California’s pristine Napa Valley.
The show appears to share some DNA with OWN’s other Black family business hit, Queen Sugar, whose seventh and final season is slated for 2022. It also bears similarities to another show centered around an upwardly mobile black family, Fox’s Our Kind of People, an adaptation of Lawrence Otis Graham’s 1999 book Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class.
Writer and executive producer Janine Sherman Barrois (Claws, Self-Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker) serves as writer and executive producer of The Kings of Napa. Winfrey and Michelle Listenbee Brown (Love Is__, Real Husbands of Hollywood) also serve as executive producers.
The Kings of Napa debuts Jan. 11 at 8 p.m. EST/PST on OWN.
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