The Bill Cosby Show (1969–1971)
8/10
A Good Comedy Series That Was Not Formulaic
31 August 2008
As a child, I remember watching this show when the reruns aired on CBN (Now the ABC Family Channel) and really enjoying it. So when I saw the First Season DVD on eBay for a low price, I could not resist buying it.

The show centered around Chet Kincaid who was a gym teacher, football and basketball coach, and valuable member of the community. His willingness to help other people always seemed to get him into unenviable situations as well as hurting his love life. For instance, there was one episode where he agreed to do his sick nephew's paper route for one day and he ended up spending all morning trying to get the papers to the right houses. Much of the plot was clean, light-hearted fare. There were no episodes that focused on serious topics like racism. The good thing about the show was that it did not follow the same formula as most other sitcoms at the time. There was no laugh track which was almost unheard of at the time. The episodes focused more on character and situational development instead of laugh-out-loud comedy. Much of the dialog by Bill Cosby seemed like it was ad libbed which gave the show kind of a natural quality. It was also one of the first series to have an African American in a leading role and Cosby served as a great role model.
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