A couple of days ago, on a total whim, I decided to start a rewatch of A Different World, the seminal Cosby Show spin-off which followed the free-spirited, new-wave, and sartorially adventurous Denise Huxtable’s (Lisa Bonet) collegiate adventures at Hillman College, a fictional HBCU. Little did I know, A Different World premiered this very week 38 years ago!
On September 24, 1987, A Different World made its big debut on NBC’s Thursday prime time lineup, sandwiched in between The Cosby Show and Cheers. The episode, titled “Reconcilable Differences”, where Denise requests a room change because of her roommate Jaleesa (Dawnn Lewis), because she feels uncomfortable around her, because she is “old” (she’s 26) and divorced.
Listen, it was 1987. We’ve come a long way when it comes to TV.
Legend has it that A Different World had a rough start. In these Television Academy interviews with show producer Anne Beatts and director Jay Sandrich, we learn a lot. Beatts tells us who she did and didn’t like working with, but more importantly, we learn that there were multiple iterations of the show and the pilot. In fact, the pilot directed by Sandrich is the second episode, in which Marisa Tomei makes her first appearance as Maggie, Jaleesa, and Denise’s third roommate.
As the late Sandrich pointed out, A Different World didn’t really start to find its voice until Debbie Allen came along in season two. Although it may not be the strongest, and it may have flaws, there is something inexplicably special about the freshman season of A Different World. Let’s start with that theme song — specifically the theme song and the opening credit sequence from season one.
Sung by the incomparable Phoebe Snow, and then later by Aretha Franklin and Boyz II Men, the theme song to A Different World, co-written by show star Dawnn Lewis as well as Stu Gardner and Bill Cosby, is easily one of the top 10 theme songs of all time.
Later to be honored by grown-ish, the opening credits sequence is introduced by a bluesy harmonica, and it leads us to a series of moving images that aren’t necessarily what A Different World was going to be in the future. It looked more like a “diverse” sitcom of the late ‘80s rather than a series about college.
Images of Lewis double-dutching remain vivid in my head after all these decades, while seeing Marisa Tomei clumsily knock over a row of bikes and act like it didn’t happen brings me joy. I also anticipate the timed lean back and laugh between Kadeem Hardison and Lisa Bonet as she holds an ice cream cone. And finally, there is the final moment when Lewis, Tomei, and Bonet pop up from behind a piano that Hardison (at least I think it’s him) is playing on the back of a truck before it drives off. It makes absolutely no sense why they would be on this truck, but they look great, and I enjoy it.
As I write this, I’m still in the middle of season two in my rewatch. These were the days when shows had 22-episode orders, so with six seasons, I have a lot of episodes to go through. Even in season two, A Different World is still a little wobbly, but it is starting to take shape. More importantly, like the sitcom on which it was spun, it’s doing something mainstream America didn’t typically see: people of color — specifically Black people occupying spaces that white people normally occupy.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
Five episodes in, and the show feels very of the era, meaning, lots of women focused on being “women”. A lot of their behavior seems to be hinged on men, but there are episodes peppered here and there that hint at some progressiveness.
In an episode titled “War of the Words”, Maggie (Tomei) is in a relationship crisis, and she tells her man that they are moving way too fast and wants to focus on her career rather than a relationship. We also get a taste of queerness in an episode titled “Wild Child”. Since it was 1987, openly LGBTQ characters on TV were not the norm, so we had a lot of queer-coded characters — like one named Cougar, a gal who is down on her luck that Denise decides to help.
They make Cougar as queer as possible without blatantly saying it. Besides giving off the butchiest energy, she has a Human Rights Campaign patch on her army jacket.
If you pay attention, you’ll also see folks from the Wayans acting dynasty in season one: Keenan Ivory Wayans plays a debate moderator in the episode where Maggie has issues with her boo, while Kim Wayans is a recurring dorm resident at Gilbert Hall.
Comedy legend and St. Denis Medical star David Alan Grier pops up in episode nine as the geology teacher everyone falls in love with — including Denise… but she falls in love with the science of rocks first, which is totally bizarre, but I love that for her.
One of my favorite season one episodes is where Rudy (Keshia Knight Pulliam) visits Denise, and Whitley ends up spending more time with her than her older sister. Rudy ends up becoming a mini-Whitley, and it turns out to be a very typical sitcom storyline done well.
Season one sets us up for five more seasons of Hillman College, and it’s the first time we are introduced to recurring characters Ron (Darryl M. Bell), Dwayne Wayne’s BFF, and Coach Walter Oakes (Sinbad).
But let’s face it, I mostly like the first season of A Different World because it looks old and I am old. But also, I remember watching the later seasons and thinking, “Is this how college is going to look?” Because it looked hella fun.
To my surprise, my first year at Texas Tech University was not a diverse array of people dancing at The Pit. Nary was there a Brown a Black face around my collegiate experience until I transferred to Texas A&M University — but even there I had to search for my fellow Filipinos in PHILSA (Philippine Student Association)— which I would eventually serve as president for two terms, thank you very much.
But while there, I remember being introduced to not only Black fraternities and sororities but other cultural organizations and groups like Vietnamese, South Asian, Chinese, Muslim, LGBTQ as well as other multicultural student organizations, and the importance of community, advocacy, and embracing your identity and having empathy for others — and at a university that was 88% white at the time and during the Bush Jr. era, that was a huge deal.
A Different World was exactly that for 1987, and it doesn’t get as much credit as it deserves. There’s not much that can be said about it that hasn’t already been said — and most of it has been covered in this amazing oral history of A Different World in Vanity Fair by Leah Faye Cooper, which features first-hand stories from nearly everyone from the cast.
I really wish Bonet had stayed on for season two, but it has been openly documented that she was with Lenny Kravitz and was pregnant with Zoe. Allen, who transformed the series, was open to writing the pregnancy into the show to make it more authentic to the real world, but Mr. Cosby was not. Therefore, Bonet was written off the show but returned in later seasons of The Cosby Show.
But I really imagine what it would have been like to have Bonet live in Allen’s version of A Different World because I felt that would have been magical.
Long before the golden age of the DEI grab and way before any of those college co-ed streaming series starring the latest and sexiest influencer, A Different World, even in its inaugural season, was doing something different and pushing envelope not only with a show about an HBCU (a term that no one probably knew at the time) but with social and political themes in later episodes at a time when shows wouldn’t come close to topics like racism, date rape, AIDS, feminism, what it means to be a Black woman, and even the L.A. riots during after the announcement of the Rodney King verdict in 1992 — which they wrote into Dwayne and Whitley’s honeymoon in the sixth season.
A Different World was never nominated for any of the major acting or writing Emmy categories, nor was it up for any Golden Globe Awards. But maybe it will get some love with its upcoming spinoff of the spinoff. Nonetheless, it sure as hell didn’t need a trophy to pave the way for so many coming-of-age dramas and comedy series in the ‘90s and well into the 21st century.
Yvette Lee Bowser, who served as a writer and producer on A Different World, would later go on to create Living Single, which debuted in 1993 and would last through 1998. Led by an ensemble of independent Black professional women, it starred Queen Latifah, Kim Coles, Erika Alexander, Kim Fields, T.C. Carson, and John Henton and would later be appropriated as a model for Friends in 1994.
More recent Black-led, university-set shows like The Quad (2017-2018), Dear White People (2017-2021), All American: Homecoming (2022-2024), and the aforementioned grown-ish (2018-2024) are direct descendants from A Different World, tackling similar socially-minded and cultural issues through a 21st century lens while the show broadened the cultural lens for series like Moesha (1996-2001), Girlfriends (2000-2008), Noah’s Arc (2005-2006) and Insecure (2016-2021).
Even beyond Black-led series, A Different World had an influence on TV, centering college settings as the main narrative, something that was rarely done at the time. It also had a diverse cast navigating young adulthood, relationships, and the complexities that come with living away from home while at college — and all of this was done in a sitcom format.
J.J. Abrams’s Felicity (1998-2002) took the college experience introduced in A Different World and turned up the dramatic dial through the titular character’s lovelorn lens, while the dramedy Greek (2007-2011) used elements of A Different World and set it in more of a collegiate Greek system. Even though it is weird and off-center comedy Community (2009-2015) owes some credit to the Cosby Show spin-off (Malcolm Jamal Warner (RIP) was a guest star!) and although it was more saccharine than socially minded, Saved By The Bell: The College Years (1993-1994) got in on the higher education action seeing as though it was on the same network as A Different World.
It all comes back to its humble first season… but there’s such a boldness in its humility and the legacy it has left behind.
