Here's how I did it, probably not the right way... but eh, it works.

Copy the ListDataSource class from ui.py standard Library to your site-packages directory.

add this to the top of the new file

from ui import *

add this in def init

self.background_color = None

add this in def tableview_cell_for_row:

cell.background_color = self.background_color

Then just set TableView.datasource to the new ListDataSource instead of TableView.datasource = ui.ListDataSource

import ui
from ListDataSource import ListDataSource

t = ui.TableView()
t.background_color = 'black'
t.tint_color = 'white'
#l = ui.ListDataSource(['One', 'Two'])
l = ListDataSource(['One', 'Two'])
l.text_color = 'cyan'
l.highlight_color = 'blue'
l.background_color = 'red'
l.tint_color = 'green'
t.data_source = l
t.present()