What's the definitive A Different World episode: the one when
Dwayne stops my girlfriend Freddie from getting date-raped, or when he
and Ron get thrown in the clink for not being white? IS there a more
under-rated sitcom than A Different World? - Xmastime
You people know I loves me the fuck outta my superslice
A Different World, and
here's an article wondering how the fuck it was the last black show to be a hit...and it was over 20 years ago.
In his essential memoir depicting his life in the TV-writing trenches, Billion-Dollar Kiss,
Jeffrey Stepakoff gives the most succinct answer to a perpetual
question in television circles: Whatever happened to the black sitcom?
In the ’70s, series like The Jeffersons, Sanford & Son, and Good Times
were Nielsen mainstays, all with either black leads or predominantly
black casts. Even more sitcoms featured prominent black characters,
often navigating or dealing with a white world. This was all prelude, of
course, to the popularity of The Cosby Show, one of the most-watched programs in television history and one that spawned both popular imitators—Family Matters—and a popular sitcom in A Different World. Yet A Different World is
the last program with a predominantly black cast to land in the top 10
of the Nielsens, and it seems entirely possible it will hold that title
for as long as television continues to exist. Through the ’90s, black
sitcoms migrated first to Fox, then to The WB and UPN, and finally to
cable outlets like TBS, instead of their once prominent homes on the
original “big three” networks. Why?
Unreal.
No way I woulda thought that.
I mean, it's not just white people that are ignoring the 600 Tyler Perry shows on today?
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