"The Cosby Show" already had a spinoff during its run: "A Different World" followed Denise Huxtable (Lisa Bonet) to an HBCU for some higher learning, where she met classmates, and forged friendships (including a character played by Marisa Tomei).
After Ms. Bonet announced she was going to have what turned out to be her Nepo Baby, Zoe, with her then partner, Lenny Kravitz, the decision was made to pull Denise out of "A Different World" because a Huxtable as an unwed mother on campus just wasn't a good look, according to executive producer Bill Cosby, and that's all I'll say about that topic, for now.
When "The Cosby Show" was winding down, there was a discussion of having a spinoff series with Theo, the Huxtable son, played by Malcolm-Jamal Warner. Mr. Warner really didn't want to keep playing Theo, and though he was interested in continuing to work, he wanted a different character with different challenges to expand his horizons and maybe challenge his acting chops. That set up this series.
Alexander James, the lead in "Here and Now" was working on his masters degree at Columbia University and majored in Psychology. Theo majored in Psychology as a college student. "A. J." as the character in this series was often called, worked at a Youth Center in Harlem. Theo also worked at a youth center. Both characters had that glib sensibility and the comic wit you'd expect from a sitcom star. So, even though it wasn't a spinoff, at heart, it really was.
Mr. Warner played A. J. a little bit hipper, a bit more street and a lot more controlled and suave than Theo, and really tried to make this character as different from his previous role as he could.
For some reason, despite the setting of Harlem for this show, the theme song chosen for the program was Arrested Development's hit single "Tennessee." The show's focus was on A. J. and his studies, his dating life and his work with the kids at the Youth Center, a bunch of boys that were as energetic and comedic as you might have hoped.
Also playing a part were a company of great actors: Charles Brown played A. J.'s "Uncle" Sydney (not an actual blood relative), who let the student stay in his apartment while he was earning his M. A., S. Epatha Merkerson who ran the youth center A. J. worked at, Daryl "Chill" Mitchell, who was another counselor at the center, and Rachael Crawford as Danielle, Sydney's daughter, who had a constant undercurrent of a love/hate relationship with A. J. as they shared the same living space.
New York played a part because there's always a need for good counselors for kids, especially in fringe neighborhoods, and there's always issues that need to be faced in a city, plus the challenges of attending an Ivy League school and the constant psychoanalysis of NYC residents were all elements that were direct to the storylines.
Perhaps this would have worked better if it were an actual spinoff with Theo Huxtable. With the focus on the community center, some of the suits at NBC weren't finding the concept as funny as they had hoped it would be. And one of the choices made was to place the show, not on the expected Thursday night time slot that "The Cosby Show" relinquished the season before. Instead, the network scheduled "Here and Now" on Saturdays at 8pm ET.
In case there was any doubt about NBC's lack of interest in this show, when the series that took "The Cosby Show'" timeslot flopped, they didn't belatedly move "Here and Now" to Thursday at 8pm ET... they moved THAT show to right after "Here and Now" on Saturday! "Here and Now" was a case of a network sandbagging a series, turning what might have been a hit show into a trivia question.
