Stars: Bill Cosby, Malcolm Jamal Warner, Phylicia Rashad, Lisa Bonet, Keshia Knight Pulliam, Tempestt Bledsoe, Dizzy Gillespie, Lena Horne, Blair Underwood, Iman, Alicia Keys

Director: Jay Sandrich

Summary: Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, along with his wife Claire, an attorney, struggle to balance the challenges of their successful careers with the demands of their five children. Features all the episodes from the first series of the show.

Already a presence on television for much of the 1960s and 1970s, in 1984 Bill Cosby debuted his new series THE COSBY SHOW, which went on to become one of the most popular shows on American television. Even in its very first year, THE COSBY SHOW was the third highest rated show in America. On the programme, Cosby played Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, who along with his wife Claire, an attorney, struggled to balance the challenges of their successful careers with the demands of their five children. The five kids all varied greatly in age and each had their own problems, which lead to a variety of plotlines for the sitcom to utilise. Cosby's goal with the show was to present a positive view of a regular, middle-class, and successful African-American family. The first series of the show features famous guest stars like Dizzy Gillespie and Lena Horne, and others who got their start on the program, like Blair Underwood, Iman, and Alicia Keys.

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Looking back at Series 1 of The Cosby Show, it's easy to forget that momentous history was being made. Not only did this immensely popular sitcom hold the #1 spot among all network TV shows for five consecutive seasons (a record that still stands), but it promoted an evolutionary progression that influenced the entire TV industry from that point forward. African Americans had enjoyed sitcom success in the past (on Julia, The Jeffersons, and Good Times), but the idealised family of Cliff and Clair Huxtable (Bill Cosby and Phylicia Rashad) represented a new and quietly revolutionary perspective; married for 21 years with five children (one in college, a detail unmentioned in the pilot episode), the Huxtables were happy and successful (he's a doctor, she's a lawyer), and issues of race were almost entirely irrelevant to the show's universal appeal. More to the point, The Cosby Show was eminently respectable family entertainment, perhaps too squeaky-clean for some tastes, but immediately popular at a time when Eddie Murphy (in Beverly Hills Cop) was honing a more profane image that Cosby disapproved of.

The show was also perfectly cast for mass appeal, from the irresistible precociousness of Keshia Knight Pulliam (as the youngest and most charming Huxtable daughter, Rudy) to the stylish adolescence of Lisa Bonet (years before her controversial role in Angel Heart) as 16-year-old Denise; Malcolm-Jamal Warner as outspoken teenager Theo; Tempestt Bledsoe as sensible younger daughter Vanessa; and Sabrina LaBeauf as college student and eventual mother of twins, Sondra. Combined with the effortless chemistry of Cosby and Rashad (credited in Season 1 as Phylicia Ayers Allen), the entire cast forged an easygoing, loosely-rehearsed dynamic that was genuinely familial. --Jeff Shannon

Aspect Ratio:	4:3 Full Frame
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Interactive menu
Year:	1984
Release Date:	May 19, 2008
Runtime:	552 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	8254128
Keywords:	English, Show, Comedy, Cosby, General, Series, Complete
Genre:	Comedy