Long before “fake news,” “The Big Cigar” looks back to the time of a fake movie – specifically, one designed to provide Black Panther Party founder Huey P. Newton cover to flee America for Cuba. Yet what should be an enticing mashup of the civil-rights movement and Hollywood in the freewheeling ‘70s doesn’t entirely ignite,

The series straddles the tonal line between the jaunty energy of a heist movie while grappling with more serious themes of racism and social revolution.

A new miniseries tells the stranger-than-fiction story of how a Hollywood radical helped Huey P. Newton escape the U.S.

Don Cheadle directs the new series, about Black Panther founder Huey P. Newton’s surprising relationship with a Hollywood producer in the 1970s.