Cosby is an American sitcom television series broadcast on CBS from September 16, 1996, until April 28, 2000. The program starred Bill Cosby and Phylicia Rashad, who had previously worked together in the 1984–1992 NBC sitcom The Cosby Show. Madeline Kahn portrayed their neighborly friend, Pauline, until her death in 1999. The series is loosely based on the British sitcom One Foot in the Grave airing on BBC from 1990 until 2001. This was also the second and final sitcom that Madeline Kahn made for The Carsey-Werner Company, her first being Oh Madeline in 1983.
Premise
Set at corner of 33rd Ave and 1539 Blake St. Astoria in Queens, Cosby portrayed grumpy Hilton Lucas, a New York City man forced into early retirement from his job as an airline customer service agent. His wife Ruth was again played by Phylicia Rashad. Initially, Telma Hopkins was cast as Ruth Lucas; however, she was recast after she reacted poorly to Cosby's tendency to ad lib. The couple had one daughter, Erica Lucas, initially portrayed by Audra McDonald and later portrayed by T'Keyah Crystal Keymáh. Doug E. Doug played Griffin Vesey, a foster son the Lucas family took in when he was younger. Griffin occasionally tried to win Erica's affections, but they decided just to remain friends when in the fourth and final season, Darien Sills-Evans portrayed Darien Evans, Erica's fiancé/husband. Jurnee Smollett also joined the cast as 11-year-old Jurnee, whom Hilton adored. The show was based on the concept from the BBC series One Foot in the Grave, starring Richard Wilson and Annette Crosbie. David Renwick, the creator and writer of One Foot in the Grave, was listed as a consultant of Cosby. One Foot in the Grave was notable for containing dark humor for a mainstream sitcom. The tone was significantly lightened for Cosby, although certain controversial scenes, such as a scene in which the lead character incinerates a live tortoise, albeit by accident, were recreated. A notable later episode was the fourth-season premiere, "My Spy", which showed Hilton watching an episode of I Spy and then dreaming an adventure with Robert Culp's character from that series. The same season also presented an episode entitled "Loving Madeline" which featured the standard opening credits for the series but was in fact a tribute to Kahn featuring the cast members out of character discussing the recently deceased actress, punctuated by clips from past episodes. Cosby premiered to an audience of more than 24.7 million viewers, but averaged 16 million viewers during the course of the season. As the series progressed, ratings shrank and CBS, fresh with new hit comedies in Everybody Loves Raymond and The King of Queens, decided to move the series from Monday to Wednesday and eventually Friday. The moves led to a drop in ratings. At the end of the fourth season, having accumulated enough episodes for the show to enter reruns, Cosby and CBS executive Leslie Moonves mutually decided to end the series. The last episode, "The Song Remains the Same", aired on April 28, 2000, and was the 96th episode to be produced and broadcast, drawing just over 7 million viewers.
