For five solid years, Living Single was part of a solid Thursday night block on Fox that caters specifically to the African-American demographic.  The show would be centered around four twenty-something black women in Brooklyn and their (mis)adventures in the workplace and the dating game.  On to the tale of the tape…

Relevance:  Oh yes.  Between the cast, the creators, and the target audience, few shows before or since have appealed so primarily to the black experience.  At this time, NBC was peaking with their own ‘Must See TV’.  Or as black people called it, ‘That New York City were black people don’t exist.’  Absolutely perfect counterprogramming.

Legacy:  The obvious superficial connection is to the TV show Girlfriends, and the number of similarities between the two.  I will point to something that may not come to mind immediately: when the show started, Queen Latifah was still kind of on the line of ‘rapper/actor’, just a female version of it.  Headlining Living Single was a great career move on her part to putting her to where she’s at today.

Craft:  I’m sure growing up with this show created a bias within me, but I think this is one of the better sitcoms of its era.  It rarely if ever ventured into pure over the top antics like pretty much every other black sitcom not named The Cosby Show.  Living Single was written well, and more importantly, you got the sense that the six principal members of the cast genuinely liked each other (or at the very least liked working with each other).

Crossover:  Um.  If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but I would be highly surprised if ‘Average Joe’ knew who Khadijah, Synclaire, Max and Regine are.

Apollo:  In a show built around relationships, the best Apollo moments are probably when the two slow burning relationships (Overton and Synclaire, Max and Kyle) were consummated.  There were a ton of great guest stars as well, but a show like this wasn’t built on the ‘surprise’ moment.  Just a consistently solid, funny sitcom about black folk.

On the other hand, next up on the countdown is a show that definitely had its share of Apollo moments.  Until then…