Queen Sugar, like Hitori said above, is just so on the nose it's feels so cheesy. When you've got such great camerawork (easily the best on tv now outside of maybe Thrones) and actors bringing their A+ game to the material the flaws of the script stand out more.

Like on the flip, I love a show like Greenleaf where Oprah herself can show up and ham it up as a bar owner who likes her men young. It has a firm grasp of what it's going for even if it's not high art the script, directors and actors are all on the same page making it lean mean television even with the weak links (the main actress)

Queen Sugar should be up there with your HBO shows for the work they put into it but it's woefully beyond the mark. For instance, I can't take the Ralph Angel narrative of him being a great understanding father when the character got introduced abandoning his child at a park to commit armed robbery: it takes the wind out of all his earlier distrust issues with his baby mother...its like nigga you worse then her!

But like you said Amoldovar also loves his melodrama and ramps it up to show the different colors of life but that feels true to the greater themes of his movies. Here, it feels like they are being a bit manipulative and are more concerned with the greater plot. Then again, unlike a 2 hour movie the script also has to service years down the line worth of possible plots.