Celebrate TV’s top 10 black shows

Eat your multicultural spinach.

That’s the unfortunate – and often erroneous – vibration that seems to be transmitted by Black History Month TV specials each year.

Whether you’re black, white, brown, red or yellow, you might recognize the subtle, underlying message: Watch this – it’s good for you!

That’s true even if the special is something as compelling and substantive as PBS’ excellent recent genealogy series “African American Lives” with Henry Louis Gates.

Or if it’s as purely entertaining as TV Land’s recent “That’s What I’m Talking About,” a lively, three-part discussion of pop culture from an African American perspective.

There’s a time to preach, there’s a time to teach, there’s a time to learn during Black History Month.

And, yes, there’s a time to eat your multicultural spinach.

But right here, right now, it’s time to celebrate and have some fun. Time to pay tribute to everyone from Fred Sanford to Oprah Winfrey, and everything from “Roots” to “Soul Train” – the African American personalities and shows that broke through, crossed over, made us laugh or gave us a dramatic jolt of recognition about the human condition.

Is it all sunshine and lollipops? Of course not.

Though we fondly recall the universal appeal of “The Cosby Show” or “The Jeffersons” or “Sanford and Son,” sitcoms with a uniquely black perspective have largely disappeared from the major networks during the past decade and migrated to smaller, less-watched networks like WB and UPN.

And for some perverse reason, network television still hasn’t created a successful black family drama.

But a little fun is why we’re here today. So without further ado, the top 10 black shows in television history:

•”Roots” (ABC, 1977): The sweeping, anguished and ultimately joyous epic of Alex Haley’s slave ancestors – beginning with Levar Burton’s Kunta Kinte – mesmerized a nation when it premiered in January 1977. It remains the signature American television event of the past 30 years.

•”The Cosby Show” (NBC, 1984-1992): The sitcom was dead and buried. And then along came Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable and his family. Bill Cosby redefined the family sitcom with a humor that was universal but also glowed with a richly specific African American spirit.

•”In Living Color” (Fox, 1990-94): Homey do play this! The groundbreaking sketch comedy – the bold, wickedly irreverent creative vision of writer-producer-performer Keenan Ivory Wayans – infused prime time with a new kind of urban chucklehead kick while introducing America to such future superstars as Jamie Foxx and Jim Carrey.

•”Sanford and Son” (NBC, 1972-77): To paraphrase a Patti LaBelle lyric, I sold my laughing heart to the funny junkman. Redd Foxx broke through to mainstream superstardom as hilariously grouchy Los Angeles junk dealer Fred Sanford, who operated his business with son and comic foil Lamont (Demond Wilson).

•”Chappelle’s Show” (Comedy Central, 2003-2005): If “In Living Color” was TV’s first black sketch comedy, Dave Chappelle took the form to a whole new level with his own brilliantly subversive twist on the genre. Hello, Clayton Bigsbee, world’s first black, blind white supremacist! All too briefly, Chappelle rocked the pop culture like no one since the late, great Richard Pryor.

•”The Jeffersons” (CBS 1975-85): Movin’ on up. Irascible George Jefferson (Sherman Hemsley) started out as a next-door neighbor to irascible Archie Bunker on “All in the Family.” But cantankerous George and his sensible, low-key wife, Louise (Isabel Sanford), grabbed the spotlight in a hugely successful spin-off when the family’s dry cleaning business allowed them to leave Queens behind and join the upper-middle class in Manhattan.

•”The Flip Wilson Show” (NBC, 1970-74): America flipped over Flip Wilson, the first African American to score a major stardom membership card as the host of his own variety show. Whether cross-dressing for success as bawdily liberated Geraldine Jones or preaching the gospel of laughter as Reverend Leroy at the Church of What’s Happening Now, Flip knew funny. His signature catchphrase? “The devil made me do it!”

•”Good Times” (CBS, 1974-79): Funny, heartwarming, beloved, controversial. The tales of Florida (Esther Rolle) and James (John Amos) Evans and their three children, a working-class Chicago family struggling to get by. The controversy? Jimmie Walker’s breakout “Kid Dyn-O-Mite!” stardom as teenage son J.J. Evans, the Fonzie of funk, was viewed by many (including disenchanted Amos and Rolle) as a broad, cartoonish stereotype.

•”Frank’s Place” (CBS, 1987-88): Tim Reid (“WKRP in Cincinnati”) starred in the sly, charmingly offbeat story of Frank Parrish, a professor of Renaissance history in Boston who inherits a small Creole restaurant in New Orleans. It was subtle (no laugh track) and emotionally wise, totally unlike anything else on TV at the time.

•”The Richard Pryor Show” (NBC, Sept.-Oct. 1977): The revolution was televised. But unfortunately, it was also censored and lasted only a month. Say it loud, he was black, proud and a comic genius. But Pryor’s constant battles with NBC management over the variety show’s edgy, satirical humor – as well as a hot movie career in the wake of “Silver Streak” – spelled a quick demise.