227

I love 227, being a teenager, I was introduced to it in syndication a few years back and fell in love with it and watched it weeknights alongside Different Strokes and Amen. It's one of the best 80s sitcoms and highly underrated. A wonderful cast especially Jackee, she 100% deserved that emmy. It jumped the shark, however around season 4 when Counters Vaughn's character was introduced (while I liked her you could tell that the show was declining). After the departure of Jackee it took a huge dive then left the airways a year later, but it still was good enough to watch.

This show was EXCELLENT for about the first two seasons....then they started messing with it. It became too socially conscious and in the process became almost unwatchable. It was hilarious when Mary and Sandra were enemies. When they became too friendly it just wasn't funny any more. I can name the episode when the slide began....When they introduced Countess Vaughn. It was straight downhill from there. Too bad. It had an excellent cast and much potential, but it wasted it trying to be too relevant. Then they had to go and add Stoney Jackson, Paul Winfield, Barry Sobel, and Toukie Smith. No offense to them, but the whole show was unraveling by that time. In the first two seasons, almost all the episodes were hilarious, but by the third season, there were only a handful that were good. The fourth and fifth season were abominable. I LOVE Marla Gibbs, but season 3-5 were substandard.

In the 1980s, NBC had shows like Cheers, The Cosby Show, The Golden Girls and Night Court, among others.

In 1985, they debuted 227, starring Marla Gibbs following her long-running role as maid Florence Johnston on The Jeffersons.

Gibbs plays housewife Mary Jenkins, who is married to her husband Lester (played by Hal Williams), who have a daughter Brenda (played by future award-winning actress Regina King).

Mary's neighbors/friends include landlord Rose Lee Holloway (played by the late Alaina Reed Hall), who had a daughter Tiffany (played by Kia Goodwin), who was dropped by the 3rd season, Mary's frenemy Sandra Clark (played to sassy perfection by Jackée Harry) and Pearl Shay (played by the late Helen Martin), who has a grandson Calvin Dobbs (played by Curtis Baldwin) who is Brenda's boyfriend.

By the 4th season, a new kid character was added in the name of Alexandria DeWitt (played by a young Countess Vaughn) and was dropped near the end of the season.

At the end of that season, Jackée would leave, but would make special guest appearances throughout the 5th (and eventually, final) season, and in comes 4 new characters: Dylan McMillan (played by Barry Sobel), Eva Rawley (played by Toukie A. Smith), Travis Filmore (played by Stoney Jackson) and new landlord Julian C. Barlow (played by Paul Winfield).

It's pretty decent and if you're looking for an underrated 80s sitcom, then enjoy watching 227!

I think that 227 is one of the best series, comedy or drama to ever be on television. It blended humour and drama into each episode, over the course of it's run it tackled topics such as homelessness and popularity (character of Brenda). Sandra was my personal favourite!

After Marla Gibbs left "The Jeffersons" she walked right into her own show: "227." 227 was the apartment number she lived in and it's where everything happened. It's where Pearl Shay (Helen Martin) sat at the window and clowned folks. It's where Sandra Clark (Jackee Harry) sassed it up. And it's where we got our first look at Regina King (she played the daughter, Brenda Jenkins) whose career is only getting stronger the older she gets.

"227" was another family favorite in our house. My mother tuned into it weekly and I enjoyed it as well. Not a whole lot happened on their stoop, but enough to make us laugh.