Best show you might have forgotten just became available on Netflix

There was a time when NBC ruled the airwaves on Thursday night. Some of the shows to appear on that night include Seinfeld, Friends, and The Cosby Show. The last show has had some gray cast over it because of the allegations involving Bill Cosby, but the show was still full of talent and dealt with subjects in a different light.

One of the stars of the show was Lisa Bonet. She was such a popular character, in fact, that NBC decided to spin off her own show from The Cosby Show and have Bonet's character, Denise Huxtable, go off to college. Denise went to the fictional HBCU Hillman College, but Bonet lasted only one year in the series. Ironically, the series A Different World was better after she left.

That is meant to be no offense to Bonet, but a tribute to how great the writing was on the show. Freed of what people might expect from a Huxtable spin-off, the writers could bring secondary characters more into focus and put those characters in situations that most Americans did not normally see on a television program that centered around African Americans.

A Different World has finally arrived on Netflix

The show dealt with current events, but also ones that greatly affected the lives of many then and still do. The list includes HIV?AIDS, domestic violence, police brutality, and sexual consent. All of these subjects are quite serious, but the trick of the creators of A Different World was that they still were tasked with making us laugh. That they did.

We believed in the characters, no matter if we always agreed with them. They were human, and not stereotypes. Jasmine Guy played Whitley Gilbert, a seemingly entitled well-to-do student, but she was not without a self-awareness that she also needed to change at times. Kadeem Hardison played Dwayne Wayne, a bit of a goof with a heart of gold.

The adults on the show could be easily identified with as well. Campus restaurant owner Vernon Gaines was not just a grumpy old man; he cared about the students and wanted to help. ROTC instructor Colonel Bradford Taylor was also a math professor and he could be gruff, but not so much that the role became two-dimensional.

The guest list of actors that appeared on the show reads like a who's-who as well. Halle Berry came on, and so did Jesse Jackson. During the show's run, it had an impact on real life as well. Enrollment at HBCUs went up, and some of that was due to the real-life settings people saw on A Different World.

The shame is that, ultimately, the series will likely always be seen as an offshoot of The Cosby Show. The good part is A Different World is now streaming on Netflix, so 38 years after the show premiered, you can make up your own mind how great it is.

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