Dl Small Screen
by American Way Staff(Shout! Factory)
Most people are familiar with the eight seasons Bill
Cosby spent as Dr. Cliff Huxtable, dispensing life lessons to Rudy
and Theo while wearing sweaters that looked like Jackson Pollock
canvases. That was
The Cosby
Show, an early staple of NBC's Must-See TV
Thursdays and the series that revived the sitcom, not to mention
the network on which it appeared. But
The Bill Cosby Show was something different. Coming on the heels of his
Emmy-winning turn as Alexander Scott in
I Spy, Cosby's
first sitcom (which ran from 1969 to 1971) bears no
resemblance to his second take on the form. Collected here on
four discs, the first season of The Bill Cosby Show plays more
like Seinfeld, with Cosby's Chet Kincaid, a gym teacher at an L.A.
high school, finding himself in a somewhat simple situation
that spirals out of control by the time the end credits roll.
It was ahead of its time in many ways, eschewing a laugh
track and not shying away from real-life problems. It wasn't
his biggest success, but as these episodes show, maybe it
should have been. -
Z.C.
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