Like nursery rhymes and ice cream-van chimes, the theme song to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was a soundtrack to my childhood, I wasn’t born when the first episode aired on September 10, 1990, but my sisters and I spent hours – usually on a Saturday afternoon, after doing our household chores – slouched on the dark brown leather sofa in our living room, watching Fresh Prince, which starred Will Smith.
The rest of the day was a mix of mostly nineties African-American family sitcoms and teen dramas, including My Wife and Kids, One on One, and Moesha, on channel 607 (which later moved to 172) – the home to the still-so-dearly-missed Trouble TV on Sky.
Fresh Prince, slightly different to The Cosby Show, which was also about an upper-class African-American family, had a fresh and unique charisma to it that reminded me of why the love of family will always be a timeless topic. So you can only imagine why stumbling across the hip-hop interludes, innovative comedic charm, and unconventional story lines in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was a gift that just kept giving.
Such programmes are the reason black children of the nineties grew up on American accents. We were regular viewers of their shows and passionate listeners of their music, immersing ourselves in the black experience being projected across the Atlantic. It made us feel seen, loved and well-represented. Some of the shows I did watch that had a majority white cast, including That 70s Show and Saved By The Bell, were entertaining, but witnessing the re-emergence of black face at the same time – despite it being inappropriate – was uncomfortable and alienating at times.
The fish-out-of-water tale of Fresh Prince – about a streetwise teenager who gets booted from the streets of West Philadelphia to stay with his auntie and uncle in Bel-Air – quickly became a guide on everything from racial profiling and police brutality, to interracial dating and racially-biased hiring policies, for young black Britons. Whilst it celebrated the many things that connect black people: shared customs, experiences, language, and food. It also challenged the idea that we are monoliths – the same.
