‘Who is Bill Cosby now?” is the question that opens comedian, author and TV presenter W Kamau Bell’s four-part documentary about his fallen idol, We Need to Talk About Cosby. “America’s Dad” is one moniker, offered by an interviewee with a thousand-yard stare. “An example of the complexity of humanity,” suggests another. “A rapist who had a really big TV show once,” says Renée Graham, columnist and associate editor of the Boston Globe.
In the first episode of this exploration of Cosby’s career, alleged (pending an appeal against the overturning of his 2018 convictions for aggravated sexual assaults) multiple predations against women for decades, and the meaning of both for Black Americans, especially, Bell interrogates all three assessments of the man.
