Which is why, even as the TV of the ’80s and ’90s is strip-mined for blandly familiar streaming content, Hillman feels like a place worth revisiting. Also titled A Different World, Netflix’s just-released revival does precisely that in a 10-episode dramedy set among Gen Z freshmen. Yet it also maintains a strong connection to the past, re-enlisting as an executive producer and director Debbie Allen, the architect of the series’ greatness, and making its protagonist the daughter of the opposites-attract golden couple Dwayne Wayne (Kadeem Hardison) and Whitley Gilbert-Wayne (Jasmine Guy). The new episodes don’t have quite the same spark of energy and wit that made the original a classic; stylistically, they share more with contemporary teen dramas like the HBCU-set All American: Homecoming and the straight-faced Fresh Prince reboot Bel-Air, whose writer and producer Felicia Pride helms this sequel. But the show does share with its predecessor vibrant characters, appealing performances, and a keen sense of how the personal intersects with the political. It’s more than enough to justify the return trip.
Jasmine Guy and Kadeem Hardison in A Different World —NetflixReally, though, the new Different World is about the kids. And that’s as it should be. As with the original cast, the mix of personalities and backstories is key. Deborah has unfinished business—of the romantic sort, naturally—with Shaquille (Cornell Young IV), the football-star son of her dad’s old roommate, smooth schemer Ron Johnson (Darryl M. Bell). Despite being second-generation Hillmanites, neither is sure they truly belong there. Shaquille had Division 1 teams fighting over him but opted to make a statement by playing for an HBCU instead. An aspiring artist whose wild behavior ruined her chances at NYU, Deborah had no alternative.
From left: Chibuikem Uche, Alijah Kai, Kennedi Reece, and Jordan Aaron Hall in A Different World —Daniel Delgado Jr.—NetflixIt’s a reverent reinvention, one that the people behind the first Different World clearly support. (Jada Pinkett Smith, Joe Morton, Glynn Turman, and Jenifer Lewis are just a few of the other past stars who appear.) Without defaulting to the Very Special Episodes that worked better in primetime than they do in a binge-dropped streaming season, Pride engages with issues relevant to her young, Black characters, often letting themes develop across episodes. Allen’s groundbreaking storylines about apartheid protests, AIDS, and the censorship of rap lyrics have given way to ones that consider the stigma around learning disabilities, friction between African and Black American cultures, and HBCUs’ reliance on funding from an anti-DEI federal government. In one episode, a bomb threat forces students to realize the school they’d hoped would give them a four-year reprieve from racism is also uniquely vulnerable to it. Yet, true to its history, the show thoughtfully interweaves these topical beats into collegiate lives that revolve around schoolwork, romantic mess, friend-group drama, money troubles, dreams of the future.
From left: Alijah Kai, Maleah Joi Moon, and Kennedi Reece in A Different World —NetflixPride was probably wise not to try recreating that balance of serious and silly. It might have come off as trivializing to a generation raised amid bigoted, post-Obama backlash and choose-your-own-apocalypse visions of doom within their lifetimes. Even if it didn’t, the multicam sitcom, in its current incarnations as well as its classic ones, reads as a throwback. The decision not to coast on nostalgia, to give viewers access to a fully realized, if somewhat more somber Hillman of classrooms and quads and athletic fields and libraries, is a sound one. More lamentable, yet also understandable, is the extent to which principled preaching, often by respected elders, supplants the hearty debate among characters that once served to underscore the diversity of thought within the Black community. The original series combined an ideal cast with ideal scripts, at precisely the right time to see them embraced by tens of millions of fans. It can’t be reproduced. Thirty-three years later, we have A Different World for a truly different world, though not the one a newly married Dwayne and Whitley might have hoped for.
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