REVIEW : 'RUDE AWOKENING' [HULU]

WOKE is streaming now on HULU.

Keef is on a winning streak. The comic he draws, starring an anthropomorphic slice of toast and pat of butter, has just secured syndication.

He's leaving his roomates behind to share a fancy apartment with his lawyer girlfriend. But one day he's minding his own business when cops surround him with guns drawn.

One tackles him. They've mistaken him for a mugger on the loose. 

While the confusion is quickly cleared up, Reef [Lamorne Morris, who played New Girl's wonderfully weird Winston] is a charged man. No longer an  apolitical cartoonist who happens to be Black, he's suddenly a Black cartoonist whose pen has a mind of his own.

[Literally - it's voiced by J.B. Smoove.]

When he fulminates over racism at a comic convention, it upends his career. ''Broke,'' a pal warns him,  ''rhymes with woke''.

Co-created by The K Chronicles cartoonist Keith Knight, Hulu's Woke traces Keef's rough path to consciousness. Morris makes an endearing leading, with Zansheer Zamata and Blake Anderson rounding out the funny cast.

A despite a title freighted with baggage the show approaches thorny issues - from race in general to the experiences of Black artists - with a light touch. [J.B.]