Multicamera comedy is typically regarded as the less sophisticated, even less serious cousin of cinematic single-camera sitcoms, though there are plenty of single-camera shows that are not much good at all, while multicamera can lay claim to I Love Lucy, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Cheers, Seinfeld and others too numerous to name. For reasons unrelated to quality, however, relatively few of these have focused on Black characters, few enough that many feel historically significant: Sanford and Son, Good Times, The Jeffersons, The Cosby Show, The Bernie Mac Show, Family Matters, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The Carmichael Show.
Netflix, which has never identified a market it hasn t attempted to serve, has recently added two to the list, Jamie Foxx s Dad Stop Embarrassing Me and The Upshaws, with Mike Epps, Kim Fields and Wanda Sykes (also a co-creator); though different in approach, both shows are built around a father whom the premise requires to become mor
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Multicamera comedy is typically regarded as the less sophisticated, even less serious cousin of cinematic single-camera sitcoms, though there are plenty of single-camera shows that are not much good at all, while multicamera can lay claim to “I Love Lucy,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Cheers,” “Seinfeld” and others too numerous to name. For reasons unrelated to quality, however, relatively few of these have focused on Black characters, few enough that many feel historically significant: “Sanford and Son,” “Good Times,” “The Jeffersons,” “The Cosby Show,” “The Bernie Mac Show,” “Family Matters,” “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” “The Carmichael Show.”