Black History Facts: The Cosby Show

One of the biggest African American television show was created by a black man Bill Cosby. The Cosby Show is an American television situation comedy starring Bill Cosby, which aired for eight seasons on NBC from September 20, 1984 until April 30, 1992. The show focuses on the Huxtable family, an affluent African-American family living in Brooklyn, New York.

According to TV Guide, the show “was TV’s biggest hit in the 1980s, and almost single-handedly revived the sitcom genre and NBC’s ratings fortunes”. Originally, the show had been pitched to ABC, which rejected it. Entertainment Weekly stated that The Cosby Show helped to make possible a larger variety of shows based on people of African descent, from In Living Color to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The Cosby Show was based on comedy routines in Cosby’s standup act, which were based on his family life. Other sitcoms, such as Home Improvement and Everybody Loves Raymond, would later follow that pattern. The show spawned the spin-off A Different World, which ran for six seasons from 1987 to 1993.

The show focuses on the Huxtable family, an affluent African-American family living in a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights, New York, at 10 Stigwood Avenue. The patriarch is Heathcliff “Cliff” Huxtable, an obstetrician, son of a prominent jazz trombonist. The matriarch is his wife, attorney Clair Huxtable née Hanks. The two characters are then followed by their five children, four daughters and one son; Sondra, Denise, Theodore (Theo for short), Vanessa and Rudy. Despite its comedic tone, the show sometimes involves serious subjects, such as son Theo’s experiences dealing with dyslexia, inspired by Cosby’s son Ennis, who was also dyslexic. Teenage pregnancy is also a topic when Denise’s friend, Veronica, played by Lela Rochon, becomes pregnant.