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Pragmatic Obots Unite

Pragmatic Obots Unite

Shooting down firebaggers & teabaggers one truth at a time...

Friday Open Thread: The History of Black Sitcoms

February 28, 2020 by Miranda 153 Comments

The Steve Harvey Show aired on The WB from August 25, 1996 to February 17, 2002. It was created by Winifred Hervey and directed by Stan Lathan.

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Steve Hightower (Steve Harvey) is a 1970s funk legend who is now a music teacher/vice-principal at Booker T. Washington High School on Chicago‘s West Side. Budget cutbacks meant Steve also had to teach drama and art, much to his surprise. Cedric Robinson (Cedric the Entertainer) is a coach at the high school, and Steve’s longtime best friend. The principal of Booker T. Washington High is Steve’s former classmate, Regina Grier (Wendy Raquel Robinson), whom Steve affectionately calls “Piggy”, because of the fact that she was overweight as an adolescent.

The Wayans Bros. is an American sitcom television series that aired on The WB from January 11, 1995, to May 20, 1999. The series starred real life brothers Shawn and Marlon Wayans. The series also starred John Witherspoon and Anna Maria Horsford (season 2 onward).

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The Jamie Foxx Show is an American sitcom that aired on The WB from August 28, 1996, to January 14, 2001. The series stars Jamie Foxx, Garcelle Beauvais, Christopher B. Duncan, Ellia English, and Garrett Morris.

Jamie King (Jamie Foxx) is an aspiring musician from Terrell, Texas, who has come to Los Angeles to pursue a career in entertainment. To support himself, he worked at his family’s hotel, the financially strapped King’s Tower, which is owned by his aunt and uncle, Aunt Helen and Uncle Junior King (Ellia English and Garrett Morris).

Among his co-workers during the series’ run were the beautiful and intelligent Francesca “Fancy” Monroe (Garcelle Beauvais) and Jamie’s high-strung, stuffed-shirt, “bourgeois” nemesis Braxton P. Hartnabrig (Christopher B. Duncan).

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The Parent ‘Hood aired on The WB from January 18, 1995 to July 25, 1999. The series starred Robert Townsend and Suzzanne Douglas. Originally to be titled Father Knows Nothing (a parody of the title of the 1950s sitcom Father Knows Best), the series was one of the four sitcoms that aired as part of the original Wednesday-night two-hour lineup that helped launch The WB network (along with The Wayans Bros., Unhappily Ever After, and the short-lived Muscle).

The series is about the Petersons, an upper-middle-class black family in Harlem, New York City. Robert Peterson (Robert Townsend) is a college professor at New York University and his wife Jerri (Suzzanne Douglas) is a law student, and they are trying to balance their lives, their work, and their four kids. The eldest two, 16-year-old Michael (Kenny Blank) and 15-year-old Zaria (Reagan Gomez-Preston), are eager to spread their wings, experiment, and avoid been seen with their not-quite-cool parents. Nicholas (Curtis Williams) is a bright-eyed 8-year-old who has discovered the joys of mischief. 4-year-old Cece (Ashli Amari Adams) is the darling of the family. Robert’s childhood buddy Wendell (Faizon Love) offers his own unique viewpoint. Robert’s love for his kids, combined with his vivid imagination (prompting frequent fantasy sequences) and impulsive energy, propels him to do extraordinary things on their behalf as he continually dreams up nontraditional solutions to traditional family problems. Many critics from news organizations such as the Associated Press and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution often referred to the show as The Cosby Show of the 1990s.

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Roc is an American comedy-drama television series that aired on Fox from August 25, 1991 to May 10, 1994. The series stars Charles S. Dutton as Baltimore garbage collector Roc Emerson and Ella Joyce as his wife Eleanor, a nurse.

The series chronicles the ups and downs of Baltimore garbage collector Charles “Roc” Emerson (Charles S. Dutton), a tightwad who constantly brought home “perks” (i.e. items thrown away by residents on his route); his wife Eleanor (Ella Joyce), a registered nurse; his womanizing younger brother Joey (Rocky Carroll), a ne’er-do-well musician who had recently returned to the neighborhood; and his father Andrew (Carl Gordon), a retired Pullman porter.

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Sister, Sister is an American television sitcom starring identical twins Tia and Tamera Mowry. It premiered on April 1, 1994, and concluded on May 23, 1999 after six seasons. The premise was that Tia Landry and Tamera Campbell were separated at birth and one was adopted by a single mother while the other was adopted by a couple, although the mother died shortly afterward; 14 years later the two accidentally found each other and reunited.

Sister, Sister was picked up by ABC as a midseason replacement and debuted on April 1, 1994, as part of the network’s TGIF comedy lineup. The show later moved to a new timeslot for the 1994–95 season, but ABC announced that it was cancelling the program due to low ratings and its final episode aired April 28, 1995. The WB, which was still in its infancy in 1995, picked up Sister, Sister to replace the cancelled Muscle on its Wednesday night lineup of shows and the third season debuted on September 6, 1995. The program found its niche as part of The WB’s lineup and aired for four additional seasons on the network, with the final episode airing on May 23, 1999. (cont’d)

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