The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Review

As a sitcom it is exactly what NBC ordered: a fish out of water premise, a laugh track, a catchphrase, and a lead with more charisma than technique in the first season. The plotting is formula, the multi camera lighting is flat even by the standards of its decade, and a stretch of the middle years runs on guest stars and dance numbers.

What makes it last is the other thing it kept doing. Every season or so the show stops, drops the laughs, and plays a scene straight, and the acting turns out to be far better than the format needed. The one everybody names is the father episode, where a parent leaves for the second time and the last thirty seconds are performed with no jokes and no music; James Avery is the reason those scenes land, and he is the best thing in the series by a distance. The ensemble around him is unusually deep for a vehicle built around one star.

A B is the honest grade. It is a good network sitcom with a handful of genuinely great episodes, and the gap between those two things is the whole story of the show.