Paramount murder mystery ‘Diarra from Detroit’ shoots Season 2 in Atlanta
Editor’s note: There are Season 1 and Season 2 spoiler plot points from already-aired episodes included in this story.
If there is a hot scripted genre right now, it’s the murder mystery. Atlanta is home to recent incarnations like the soapy “His & Hers” limited series on Netflix and the quirky “DTF St. Louis” on HBO Max.
“Diarra from Detroit,” another quirky murder mystery with sharp dialogue and strong characters, used Atlanta as its production base for Season 2, which debuted last week on Paramount+. It stars creator Diarra Kilpatrick playing a schoolteacher, Diarra Brickland, who becomes an amateur sleuth.
In Season 1, she distracts herself from a crumbling marriage with a successful attorney (a suave Morris Chestnut) by falling for the mysterious Chris (Shannon Wallace), who she meets on Tinder.
Then he ghosts her. Or does he?
Diarra decides to investigate Chris’ situation and discovers he may be linked to a 30-year-old missing person case. With her colorful friends, she gets enmeshed in local gangs, an underground sex club and a high-stakes poker game. By the end of Season 1, she solves the missing person’s case, paving the way for a fresh adventure on Season 2.
Despite being very much a show set in Detroit, Season 1 was actually produced in New Jersey, which benefited from its state tax credit system. Last year, BET+, the original home of the show, chose to move “Diarra from Detroit” to Atlanta, a minor coup for Georgia, which has recently struggled to attract scripted series.
In October, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution visited the “Diarra from Detroit” set at Westside Stageworks, 20 minutes west of downtown Atlanta. There, the producers built a replica of a modernized Detroit speakeasy that is heavily featured on Season 2.
Kilpatrick, in an interview with the AJC on set with three of her co-stars, said that while shooting in Detroit obviously would have been ideal, Atlanta is not a bad substitute.
“Atlanta feels like a sister city to Detroit,” she said. “It’s a chocolate city. It’s a place where Black people can own businesses and are elected to public service positions. And there are a lot of Detroiters here in Atlanta. The flavor of the people is very similar.”
Bryan Terrell Clark, who plays Diarra’s gay teacher bud, Mr. Tea, compares Atlanta to a pomegranate: “You look at it and say, ‘Is this what Atlanta is?’ Then it opens up and you see this whole world in there.”
Unusual analogies aside, this is not the first time Atlanta has masqueraded for Detroit. Starz’s recent series “BMF,” based on the real-life story of drug kingpins Demetrius “Big Meech” Flenory and Terry “Southwest T” Flenory, shot four seasons in the area, from 2021 to 2025.
The locations where “Diarra from Detroit” shot this season include Callanwolde Fine Arts Center in Druid Hills (which stands in for the Detroit Yacht Club), Tyler Perry Studios (Vonda’s house), Bouckaert Farm in Fairburn (Homeland Farms), Club 291 in southwest Atlanta (Vulture Biker Bar) and Big Bethel AME Church in Sweet Auburn (Trinity Rose Baptist Church.)
Season 2 of “Diarra from Detroit” continues several months after the end of Season 1. Diarra, having rescued Chris from kidnapping, has stayed with him as his girlfriend despite his deep-seated trauma that includes copious crying jags.
At a backyard barbecue held by Chris’ family, Diarra breaks into his childhood bedroom in hopes of finding more clues about his background and a crime syndicate.
Later in the season, she will seek a legendary pot of gold in the tunnels of Detroit built during the Prohibition era.
“Diarra has a way of attracting danger,” Kilpatrick said. “This is just another mess that she finds herself in.”
Speaking of danger, the therapy-loving criminal character, Danger (Jon Chaffin, who also starred in “BMF,”), left town at the end of Season 1 but returns for Season 2.
“My own sister and aunt would have been mad if he didn’t come back,” Kilpatrick said. “There are a lot of Danger fans out there — Danger-ettes.”
“People love Danger because of how he shows up for Diarra,” Chaffin said of their friendship, which includes massages and pancakes but no sex.
Indeed, “Diarra” is notable for its unusual blend of characters, each with distinctive points of view.
“A lot of Black shows feature Black people who brunch or Black people who sell drugs,” Kilpatrick said. “The truth is we are 1 degree of separation from those interconnected worlds. It’s more complicated. I like to see the mix of characters and demographics coming together in Detroit.”
“You can brunch and be a drug dealer, too,” added DomiNque Perry, who plays Diarra’s sassy, aspiring entrepreneur friend, Aja — who is modeled after Detroiter Melissa Butler, creator of the Lip Bar vegan beauty brand.
This season has been a long time coming. “Diarra” debuted in the spring of 2024. BET+, the original streaming service home for the show, was slow to renew the series, finally giving a green light last year.
BET+ finished the eight episodes last fall. Then Paramount earlier this year decided to kill off BET+, delaying the second season’s release even further. The gap between Season 1 and Season 2? Two years and four months.
On the bright side, “Diarra from Detroit” will get far more eyeballs on Paramount+, which has about 80 million subscribers worldwide. Subscriber numbers for BET+ were never officially released, but estimates never went above 5 million.
Those who have seen “Diarra” have lauded its layered storytelling and compelling characters. On Rotten Tomatoes, the show has a perfect 100% rating among critics and a 92% positive score among viewers.
Rogerebert.com calls it “Nancy Drew for grown-ups.” Indiewire dubs it “the detective hangout comedy you didn’t know you needed.”
Average folks trying to solve murders is hardly a new idea and was elevated by Hulu’s hit series “Only Murders in the Building.”
“We’ve been trying to start a beef with ‘Only Murders in the Building,’” Kilpatrick joked.
“We are cooler than ‘Only Murders in the Building!’” Clark said.
“It’s like that — but with so much more flavor!” Kilpatrick added.
“That show is a great meal,” Clark added. “We have a little more seasoning.”
IF YOU WATCH
“Diarra from Detroit,” available on Paramount+, with new episodes airing every Wednesday through Sept. 9.