Tag: ernest thomas
What’s Happening!! aired on ABC from 1976 to 1979. The show premiered as a summer series. With good ratings and reviews, and after the failure of several other shows on the network, What’s Happening!! returned in November 1976 as a weekly series. It remained a regular show until 1979; ratings were modest. What’s Happening!! was loosely based on the motion picture Cooley High, also written by Eric Monte.
The series followed the lives of three working-class African-American teens living in the Watts section of Los Angeles. The show stars Ernest Thomas as Roger “Raj” Thomas, Haywood Nelson as Dwayne Nelson, and Fred Berry as Freddy “Rerun” Stubbs. Co-starring are Danielle Spencer as Roger’s younger sister Dee; Mabel King as Roger and Dee’s mother Mabel; and Shirley Hemphill as Shirley Wilson, a waitress at Rob’s Place, the neighborhood restaurant where the boys are regular patrons.
Repeats of the show’s 65 episodes did reasonably well in syndication. In some markets, the show was perceived to appeal to both children and adults in a similar way to The Brady Bunch and Happy Days. With this in mind, a revival of the show was produced entitled What’s Happening Now!!. It ran from 1985 to 1988 in first-run syndication. (Wikipedia)
My Third Parent 