The Sinbad Show aired from September 1993 until July 1994 on FOX.
Comedy about a multigenerational, black extended family. Big guy David Bryan (Sinbad ) was a struggling young computer video game designer living in the Silicon Valley area of San Francisco who took in two foster children, lovable Zana ( Erin Davis) and her smartass older brother L.J. ( Willie Norwood). Setting a good example for the two youngsters did put a cramp in his swinging bachelor lifestyle, but the love he got from them made it all worthwild. David's parents, Rudy and Louise ( Hal Williams, Nancy Wilson), were frequent visitors who adored the kids and helped out. Less enthusiastic about the situation was Clarence ( T.K. Carter), David's best friend and former roommate, who had to move out when the kids moved in. A born hustler and womanizer , he found it much more difficult to get Davis to party now that he was responsible for two children. At mid-season David got a job as host of the local children's TV show It's Science Time, in which he used funny demonstrations to explain scientific principles to the audience.
When the Sinbad Show premiered, one of the regulars was Gloria ( Selma Hayek), the daughter of David's landlady. Her character was dropped barely a month later.
A Review from Variety
The Sinbad Show
((Thurs. (16), 8:30-9 p.m., FBC))
By TONY SCOTT
Filmed by David and Goliath Prods., Gary Murphy/Larry Strawther Prods. and Touchstone TV. Exec producers, Gary Murphy, Larry Strawther, Michael Jacobs; supervising producer, Daniel Palladino; producers, David A. Caplan, Brian LaPan, Tim Steele; director, David Trainer; writers, Murphy, Strawther, Jacobs, Caplan, LaPan; story-creators, Murphy, Strawther, Sinbad; re-written by Jacobs, Caplan, LaPan.
Foster father knows best when single, 35-year-old computer graphics designer David Bryan (comedian Sinbad) takes on young foster kid L.J. (Willie Norwood) and L.J.'s wee sister Zana (Erin Davis) to raise and to cherish. Slotted between "The Simpsons" and "In Living Color," good-hearted sitcom should be grateful for its neighbors; out there alone, it would need help.
David -- sharing his apartment with best friend Clarence (T.K. Carter) -- is an agreeable character, but L.J.'s sassy, if not downright crude; as for little Zana, of course she's adorable.
David, who got the two from afoster children's center, discovers L.J. and Zana are about to be broken up because a couple wants Zana alone. David convinces the home's matron (Lorraine Toussaint) he'll be a good single parent, so the kids join him.
Trouble is, most of the material is predictable or recycled, and L.J. is a bum role model for youngsters tuning in, unless they're to learn from his disciplining.
Based on this first episode, the future is shaky. "Sinbad" can be grateful to its lead-in and lead-out; it offers little in between.
An Article from USA TODAY
Full speed ahead for Fox sitcom
By Jefferson Graham
USA TODAY
BURBANK CALIF.-The pilot episode for Sinbad's new Fox show was scrapped and redone. The producers were fired. Several actors were replaced.
But even all of that behind-the-scenes turmoil hasn't stopped the TV seers from saying The Sinbad Show, which premieres Thursday at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT on Fox, will be a big, big hit.
"Sinbad has a lot of warmth and charm," says Madison Avenue's Paul Schulman. " He has a big following from A Different World and his stand-up comedy shows. And he's a perfect fit with The Simpsons."
Fox sees the 6-foot-5 comic as its next Bart Simpson: A wild , goateed, carrot-topped grown-up who never grew up. In Sinbad, he plays a swinging bachelor computer game designer who radically changes his lifestyle by becoming a foster parent to two yound kids.
Fox expects big things from the big guy. Price for a 30 -second advertisemnent spot on Sinbad is $150,000, according to advertising Age. That's more than time slot competitors are asking: NBC's Wings( $140,000), CBS' In the Heat of the Night ( $80,000) or ABC's new Missing Persons ($65,000).
When Sinbad was on A Different World, playing grad student Walter Oakes, the directors didn't know what to make of him.
" They thought I was crazy," says Sinbad, who insisted on improvising in front of the studio audience. The directors wanted him to read the material as written. When he refused, he was suspended from the show for five weeks.
" I just wanted to be funny," Sinbad says. " When Robin Williams did it, they say he's clever. With me, it's 'He's crazy. We have to slow him down.' So I decided that I had to one day have my own show, where what I do is allowable."
Sinbad ( his real last name is Adkins and he won't reveal his first name) quit A Diferent World two years ago to return to stand-up comedy, and then decided last spring that he was ready to return to the sitcom wars.
He signed up with Disney because there he could also make movies. And as a comic who has been acclaimed for working clean," Disney makes the kinds of movies I want to do," he says.
The comic had the concept all worked out about the single guy turned foster parent. Sinbad is hot, comics are hot, and CBS and Fox ended up in a bidding war for his services. He went with Fox because it guaranteed him the Thursday post-Simpsons time slot.
Sinbad wanted to do a show about a single dad-a popular topic for new shows, with NBC's The Second Half and CBS' The Nanny-because " I was tired of the rap that men got. There's a magic that women can't bring to the relationship and it's about time somebody talked about it."
Sinbad, 36 has two kids, ages 7 and 4, and has been seperated from his wife for two years.
But he's big on family and his views on family life and kids are a big topic in his stand-up act. Additionally, his sister is his publicist and his brother manages his career.
Sinbad grew up in Benton Harbor, Mich., the son of a minister who " thought I lost my mind" when he decided to become a comic.
" But that was nothing new for him," Sinbad says. " He thought I lost my mind on a regular basis."
Sinbad quit college four weeks before completing his senior year " because I knew I didn't want to be involved with anything the school would give me," and joined the Air Force. But he was kicked out of the service for impersonating officers and going AWOL, a few too many times.
He decided to become a comedian, and spent much of the '80s on the road on his self-christened Poverty Tour. He would hitch rides and bum sandwiches from town to town to play clubs-any club.
" I would walk up to people and say, 'Hey, have you heard of Bill Cosby? Well, I'm going to be the next Bill Cosby. My name is Sinbad and one day I will be famous. And when I make it, I'm going to repay you.'"
He says he kept records, and has paid many of the good samaritans back.
By 1983, he had almost won the comedy finals on Star Search, a good enough showing to get him a bit part on ABC's short-lived The Redd Foxx Show. But it was Bill Cosby that changed his life.
When Sinbad heard there was an opening for a warm-up man at the pilot taping of The Cosby Show spinoff A Different World, he conned his way into the job by telling the associate producer of his wonderful track record as a warm-up guy.
That night he put on the show of his career. Cosby, who was in the audience, walked up to him, took Sinbad's mike and said, " You ought to be in front of the camera." Within a year, he had guested on Cosby and became a World regular.
Four years later he went back to his greatest love-stand-up. " Nothing touches stand-up," he says. " Nothing. It's all you, and whatever comes to your head, you can do."
Sinbad rarely works on a set routine. He prefers walking onstage and improvising. " You never know what I'm going to do," he says. " There was a guy in the audience heckling me one night, and I told him that if he didn't stop, I would jump off the stage, right onto his lap. And I did it."
After striking the deal with Disney, the studio paired him with former Night Court executive producers Gary Murphy and Larry Strawther. Fox was so eager for the show that the network bought it without a plot. The first episode was eventually filmed and an early August airdate was assigned-but then Fox and Disney started to wonder if they couldn't do better.
They decided to delay the airdate for a month and shut down production. Producer Michael Jacobs was brought in to overhaul the first episode ( not one word from the original remained). The actor who played Sinbad's foster son was replaced; so was the woman who ran the foster care facility. A sexy landlady was added to the cast.
In the original pilot, Sinbad's character had to be conned into taking the kids; now he has to fight to get them. The tinkering paid off; the new version is funnier, and Sinbad's character is more sympathetic. In the first incarnation, he came off as somewhat of a heel.
Murphy and Strawther remained through the second and third episodes, but they were ousted last week. The new executive producers are Michael J. Weithorn ( True Colors) and Ralph Farquhar-the team behind Fox's midseason South Central, a comedy/drama set in south central Los Angeles.
" What happened here is that most shows have eight weeks to put things together," Sinbad says. " We didn't have that time. There's a lot of money involved , and a lot of pressure on us. It wasn't like we could just sneak on the air and find ourselves.
" Because I have a little bit of a name, and we're following The Simpsons, everybody wants it to be perfect."
Dean Valentine who runs Disney's TV division, says all the behind-the-series turmoil is really irrelevant to what viewers will see.
" We felt we had a chance here to have a truly great show, and we went out of our way to make sure everything was perfect," he says. " In the end, whats on screen is what counts, and we now have a much better, great show."
A Review from USA TODAY
TV PREVIEW/BY MATT ROUSH
A lighthearted journey
'The Sinbad Show' debut has a win in its sails
Sinbad is not bad.
Just the opposite, really."Am I better than nothing?"
asks the popular stand-up comic, playing a sweet-natured bachelor who volunteers at a foster home, as he pleads for the right to take in a young brother and younger sister so they don't get seperated.
Truth is, he's better than just about everything out there in the numbingly ubiquitous genre of the family sitcom.
Though its too early to know if it will hold up-and the show was beset by early creative setbacks-The Sinbad Show gets off to one of the most promising starts since his mentor Bill Cosby revived the format and created a monster populated by the grating likes of Urkel and the Olsen Twins.
Unlike such well-meaning failures as Cosby's Here and Now , this one manages not to sacrifice good humor on the alter of positive values. Credit for that goes to its likable star, a huggable and exuberant teddy bear in loud clothes.
He's a willing goof, an eternal adolescent who grooves to awful '70s music. It's pretty clear that as the show goes on, he'll be growing up along with his two charges, tough-talking L.J. ( Willie Norwood) and adorable Zana ( Erin Davis)
Once the pilot disposes with some half-hearted Fox-style humor-leering at the landlord's daughter and swapping In Living Color references with his best bud ( T.K. Carter)-Sinbad reveals its enormous heart. Improvising a James Brown Big Bad Wolf bedtime story, engaging in a water-pistol fight and relaxing with a sleepy kid's head on each shoulder, Sinbad's a boss dad.
Where the show walks its uneasiest tightrope is in the tricky mix of sentimentality with urbin hip. The kids have sass, but ply it without too much smarm. When the grown-ups do their babehound bit, it's without Fox's trademark leer.
In short, Sinbad has class because Sinbad has class. Kids will love him, parents will admire him. And with The Simpsons as a puckish lead-in, many are likely to watch him.
A Review from Entertainment Weekly
TV Review
SINBAD TO WORSE
THE COMIC'S SHOW MAKES HIM THE BUTT OF SINFULLY BAD JOKES
By Ken Tucker
Pity the star of the Sinbad show (Fox, Thursdays, 8:30-9 p.m.). Frisky, amiable Sinbad is the victim of what has become a standard sitcom mistake: A show is built around the performance persona that a skilled stand-up comedian has carefully cultivated, but then it leaves him stranded without strong scripts or much of a supporting cast. Sinbad plays a computer-games inventor who takes in two youngsters (Willie Norwood and Erin Davis); that's it, as far as the premise goes. The comedian spends the half hour smiling warmly, selling flimsy punch lines, and being the object of such lines as, ''You got the highest butt I ever seen on a man''-one of the lowest jokes of the season thus far. C-
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