ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Lollivan It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Cristal The movie really just wants to entertain people.

steve-575 As a child, I remember watching this show when the reruns aired on CBN (Now the ABC Family Channel) and really enjoying it. So when I saw the First Season DVD on eBay for a low price, I could not resist buying it.The show centered around Chet Kincaid who was a gym teacher, football and basketball coach, and valuable member of the community. His willingness to help other people always seemed to get him into unenviable situations as well as hurting his love life. For instance, there was one episode where he agreed to do his sick nephew's paper route for one day and he ended up spending all morning trying to get the papers to the right houses. Much of the plot was clean, light-hearted fare. There were no episodes that focused on serious topics like racism. The good thing about the show was that it did not follow the same formula as most other sitcoms at the time. There was no laugh track which was almost unheard of at the time. The episodes focused more on character and situational development instead of laugh-out-loud comedy. Much of the dialog by Bill Cosby seemed like it was ad libbed which gave the show kind of a natural quality. It was also one of the first series to have an African American in a leading role and Cosby served as a great role model.

rsanders-6 Some people write about this show "failing" because it was only on for a couple of years. My cloudy recollection is that it was doing OK, between 15-20 in the Nielsens, when Cosby went into one of his funks and quit doing the show. Can anyone verify this? Regardless, it was very, very funny. Character-driven, not gag-every-10-seconds-oriented like so many lame-brained sit-coms. The story lines were often imaginative: e.g. Chet Kincaid spending the whole show trying to replace a needle valve for blowing up basketballs; dealing with a potty-mouthed student and his parents; trying to borrow a vehicle for a big date (ends up driving a garbage truck). It often taught good lessons, but with subtlety compared to his '80s show.The last time I saw it on the air was on Pat Robertson's old Family Channel over a dozen years ago. !?!?! Why have these re-runs completely disappeared?

ernieswanks_757 As an African-American I really enjoyed "The Bill Cosby Show" primarily because of the image that "Chet Kincaid" portrayed which was a very positive one. The character was well respected in both the School as well as the Community he lived in. He was always giving some advice or helping some youngster with a school or social problem. He was also well respected by his co-workers on the Teaching Staff at the School. He & Joyce Bulifant always seemed to get along together in their exchanges of dialogue together. It was a good feeling for me to see an African-american Actor such as Mr. Cosby play a role that was not that same old "Run of the mill" Stereo-typical Black Man.This show came at at a time when African-American Actors were trying to get more meaningful roles that would send a much more powerful & positive image to the viewers.This show was able to accomplish that & for that reason, It should be commended.

F Gwynplaine MacIntyre Bill Cosby's work has always has always been distinguished by a keen intelligence, in every medium to which he turns his talents. 'The Bill Cosby Show' is one of Coz's less distinguished credits, but it deserves to be better known: this series is a brave attempt at doing something different.Even the theme tune of this series was unusual and distinctive, featuring a vocal track by Cosby himself making weird scat-like sounds ... of the sort now associated with Michael Winslow in the 'Police Academy' movies.Although nominally a comedy, 'The Bill Cosby Show' was not a conventional sitcom, and there was only secondary emphasis on humour. (In other words, the show wasn't very funny ... but it wasn't trying to be.) Cosby was more interested in depicting believable characters in plausible situations, addressing genuine issues of the time.Cosby played Chet Kincaid, the gym teacher at an urban high school. In one episode of this series, Chet had to contend with a teenager on his basketball team who played brilliantly but had a penchant for foul language. Unfortunately, American TV in the late '60s couldn't handle this theme sensibly. Whenever the teenager spoke, the soundtrack made a weird electronic bleeping noise ... leaving the audience to **figure out** that the boy had uttered a cuss word. In another episode, Cosby coached a Little League baseball team that only played on Sundays. His star pitcher was a young Hasidic Jew. When a game was rescheduled for the Saturday, Cosby had to deal with the fact that his pitcher's religious beliefs conflicted with his obligations to his teammates.Bill Cosby is rightly praised for being one of the few African-American comedians who doesn't do racial material, and the skin colour of the character he played in 'The Bill Cosby Show' was almost totally irrelevant. Almost, but not entirely. In one episode, Chet went for a morning jog but immediately got arrested by a couple of white police officers who claimed that Chet fit the description of a man who had just committed a crime. Race was never mentioned, but it's hard not to think of all the occasions when white police officers have randomly arrested **any** black man who happens to be near a crime scene. I thought that this episode would be going in that direction, but I was surprised: at the end of the episode, when the cops nabbed the real culprit, he looked very similar to Cosby. (This reminded me of Hitchcock's movie 'The Wrong Man', starring Henry Fonda, in which the real criminal looked a lot like Fonda.)Speaking of Henry Fonda, the best episode of 'The Bill Cosby Show' is a real tour de force, a three-hander starring Cosby, Henry Fonda and Elsa Lanchester, and taking place almost entirely in an elevator. Fonda and Lanchester portrayed, respectively, the maths teacher and the Polish charwoman who get trapped in the school's lift with gym teacher Cosby. They spend most of the episode in the elevator, waiting for help. The fact that Lanchester's character speaks no English makes the situation even more frustrating. In a desperate attempt to pass the time, Cosby teaches Fonda how to play Twenty Questions ... with very funny results.In another episode, veteran character actor Mantan Moreland guest-stars as Chet's uncle. Moreland was a very talented performer who had to spend much of his career doing stereotypical Negro roles ("Feets, do yo' stuff!") but he's very good here as the uncle of Cosby's character. I'll rate 'The Bill Cosby Show' 7 points out of 10 for its honesty, its intelligence, and its bravery in offering audiences something different. But audiences are more interested in brainless laugh-fests than in intelligent character studies... which is why this series flopped.