The Good Times reboot opens in the Chicago projects with its next-gen patriarch in the shower naked duetting the original theme song with a roach on the window sill. Dy-no-mite, this is not.
We may well now have the official cause of death for Norman Lear, the god-like sitcom producer who brought Good Times – a spinoff of a spinoff of the groundbreaking TV series All in the Family – to network television in 1974. The reboot, an animated show now, was among the final credits Lear had before his death late last year at 101. Carl Jones, the brilliant writer-animator behind Adult Swim bangers like the Boondocks and Black Dynamite, bailed on the project “due to creative differences”, he wrote after Netflix dropped a trailer for the new show to the horror of TV fans who have long viewed the show as cornerstone of Black Americana. Some character wardrobe pieces are on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, along with works from Ernie Barnes, the Black Romantic whose Sugar Shack painting was used for the closing credits and a Marvin Gaye album.
