bill cosby show

The Bill Cosby Show, more commonly known as The Cosby Show, is an American television sitcom created by and starring Bill Cosby. It originally aired on NBC from September 20, 1984, to April 30, 1992, spanning eight seasons with a total of 201 episodes. The show centers around the Huxtable family, an upper middle-class African-American family living in Brooklyn, New York. Bill Cosby played Dr. Heathcliff "Cliff" Huxtable, a successful obstetrician and gynecologist, and his wife Clair, portrayed by Phylicia Rashad, is an attorney. The series focused on their family life with their five children, called Sondra, Denise, Theodore (Theo), Vanessa, and Rudy. The show was hugely popular, spending five consecutive seasons as the number one rated show on television. It was notable for portraying a wealthy and successful Black family in a positive light, which was not common on TV at the time. Its impact on the portrayal of Black Americans on television was significant, and Bill Cosby's character was famously named "America's Dad." The Cosby Show also launched a spin-off called A Different World. The series drew some inspiration from Bill Cosby's stand-up comedy and his real family life, with an emphasis on education, family values, and predominantly positive, everyday experiences of the Huxtable family. The show was an international success and considered a cultural icon of the 1980s. Since 2014, reruns of The Cosby Show have been pulled from various networks due to the Bill Cosby sexual assault cases.