Legendary comedian Bill Cosby is preparing his return to TV with a new sitcom on NBC.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, NBC executives have announced that Rules of Engagement writer Mike Sikowitz and Mike O’Malley are writing and producing the new comedy.
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”. Entertainment Weekly stated that The Cosby Show helped to make possible a larger variety of shows with a predominantly African-American cast, from In Living Color to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
The Cosby Show was based on comedy routines in Cosby’s stand-up act, which in turn were based on his family life. The show helped inspire a number of later sitcoms starring a stand-up comedian and based around that comedian’s onstage persona, including highly successful series such as Roseanne, Seinfeld, Home Improvement and Everybody Loves Raymond.
The Cosby Show spawned the spin-off A Different World, which ran for six seasons from 1987 to 1993.
The new Bill Cosby project is described as a “classic, big, extended family sitcom.” Cosby will star as the patriarch and father to three married daughters with children.
Bill Cosby has become a piece of American TV history. But, just because a legendary comic returns to TV it does not mean that the show is destined for success. The Michael J. Fox show brought back Michael J. Fox, but the show was quickly cancelled due to lack of viewers and poor reception from critics.
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