Der Fall Bill Cosby

Like Kamau, I grew up with Cosby. I adored Fat Albert, I laughed until I couldn't breathe listening to his comedy albums. It is incredibly heart wrenching to discover what a terrible person he was. It's also truly horrifiying to confront how many people over the years helped him keep that secret. And it's awesome in the worst possible sense of the word to realize how one person can be two utterly different people, one who does tremendous good in the world and one who is a monster. Thank you, Kamau, for this amazing and heartbreaking retrospective!

I think this content is bound to rub many people the wrong way. The director admits that he has a viewpoint from the beginning.

If you are coming to this project to explore Cosby's "innocence" you won't find that here.

What you will find is a nicely paced docuseries that doesn't lie about Bill Cosby's impact to American & Black culture. Instead W. Kamal Bell decenters Bill Cosby the legend and recenters him as a real person while giving space for survivors to tell their stories.

This isn't a piece to simply bash someone who has done bad. It's deeper than that and worth the watch.

He may be free on a legal technicality, but as director W. Kamau Bell points out in this four-part documentary, his legacy cannot be simply ignored. Bell recognizes the need to re-examine Cosby's life and groundbreaking career through the lens of the comedian's self-admitted behavior as a narcissistic sexual predator. Not only does Bell have some of the survivors recount their unsavory encounters with Cosby, but he also secures others well-versed with his deep cultural impact and challenged by how to reconcile the two Cosbys that co-exist.

He was definitely both, monumentally important to black lives in the 60s and beyond, and a real monster to individual women. Horrible human being with two faces.

This thoughtful and intelligent look at the complexity of the legacy of Bill Cosby is a must see. While the creator, W. Kamu Bell, makes it clear about his opinion of the guilt of Cosby, that does not stop him from doing two important things. The first is to provide a platform for a wide variety of opinions on Cosby and his legacy. The second is highlight the positive and negative impacts in a societal and personal way. There are a tons of interviews of people who have first hand accounts, were influenced by Cosby, and experts in the industry. The footage of Cosby on television, in standup, and in movies, makes this worth seeing alone. It is an archive of great film and television. One of the complexities of this project is that as it was completed there was a dramatic change in the legal proceedings against Cosby-which extended the project. I have seen Bill Cosby several times live. He was amazing. His impact on the world was amazing. That doesn't change by my belief that he did terrible things. It is complex. I don't have an opinion more than that people are more than any one thing they do, or don't do.