Can you believe this!? On this day 32 years ago… ‘Living Single’ premiered on Fox!!!
Living Single centered on six friends in their 20s living the single life in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.[2]
The series focused on two different households in one brownstone, one shared by a trio of independent women and another shared by two male friends who had known each other since childhood while living in Cleveland, Ohio. In the first apartment, Khadijah James (Queen Latifah), a hard-working editor and publisher of the fictional urban independent magazine Flavor, lived with her sweet but naive cousin Synclaire James (Kim Coles), an aspiring actress who worked as Khadijah’s receptionist and had an affinity for Troll dolls, and her childhood friend from East Orange, New Jersey, Regina “Régine” Hunter (Kim Fields), an image-conscious boutique buyer who was on a constant search for a well-to-do man to spend her life (and his money) with.
Maxine “Max” Shaw (Erika Alexander), a sharp-tongued Attorney and Khadijah’s best friend from their college days at Howard University, frequently stopped by to share her unique insights and the events of her day, to make sure that the girls’ refrigerator wasn’t overstocked, and to start trouble with Kyle, looking for any chance to make his life worse.
Kyle Barker (T.C. Carson) lived in the second apartment with Overton Wakefield Jones (John Henton). Overton was the friendly but bucolic maintenance man for the owner of their (and neighboring) building, who held a deep affection for Synclaire and plenty of hilarious homespun wisdom for everyone else. Kyle was a stockbroker whose constant verbal sparring with Max did little to mask their obvious sexual attraction to each other.
Creator Yvette Lee Bowser‘s initial goal was to develop a show about herself and her friends that would change the portrayal of young Black people on television. Her overall goal was to portray Black characters positively and less stereotypically. She also noted that the women represented on Living Single are four different sides of herself, saying in an interview, “I’ve been as ditsy as Synclaire, as superficial as Regine, as bitter as Max, and as focused and driven as Khadijah.”
During Living Single‘s first season, it consistently garnered higher ratings than Martin, which aired in the time slot immediately before it on Thursday nights, and it quickly became the fourth highest-rated show aired on Fox among their 12 current series.
Throughout its run, Living Single became one of the most popular African-American sitcoms of its era, ranking amongst the top five in African-American ratings in all five seasons.
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