The Cosby Show

About The Cosby Show

The Cosby Show is an American television situation comedy starring Bill Cosby, first airing on September 20, 1984 and running for eight seasons on the NBC television network, until April 30, 1992. The show focused on the Huxtable family, an upper-middle class 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 African Americans, from In Living Color to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The Cosby Show was also one of the first successful sitcoms based on the subject matter of a standup comedian’s act, blazing a trail for other such successful programs as Roseanne, Home Improvement, The Drew Carey Show, Seinfeld, and Everybody Loves Raymond. The Cosby Show along with All in the Family are the only two American programs that have been #1 in the Nielsen Ratings for five consecutive seasons. The show spawned the successful spin-off A Different World.

The show focused on the Huxtable family, a likable upper-middle class African-American family living in a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights, New York, at 10 Stigwood Avenue. The patriarch was the very playful Heathcliff "Cliff" Huxtable, an obstetrician. The matriarch was his very eloquent wife, attorney Clair (Hanks) Huxtable. The show involved comfortably usual difficulties of children growing up, such as son Theo's experiences of dealing with dyslexia, which was based on Cosby's real-life child Ennis, who was dyslexic.