Viola Davis in ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’

David Lee / Netflix
Produced by Denzel Washington, with a screenplay by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom will premiere on Netflix December 18.
For starters, it features the final performance of Chadwick Boseman, the gifted Black Panther actor who died unexpectedly of colon cancer at age 43 in August, at the prime of his career.
Boseman excels in singing and dancing as Ma Rainey’s professional and romantic rival, Levee. The late actor invests all the resources that he has in playing the seemingly arrogant yet deeply bruised trumpeter, abused by the white recording industry he is forced to work for.
Set in Chicago circa 1927, the music-infused drama centers on a strong-willed Southern blues singer who is in charge of her band and in love with a woman.