September 22, 2005 (2005-09-22) – May 8, 2009 (2009-05-08)
Everybody Hates Chris is an American television semi-autobiographical sitcom created by Chris Rock and Ali LeRoi.[1] The show is inspired by the memories of Rock as a teenager. The show is set from 1982 to 1987, but Rock himself was actually a teenager from 1978 to 1985, having been born in 1965.[2][3][4][5][6]
The show was originally developed for Fox, before being passed over.[7] It was then picked-up by UPN, where it aired for its first season in 2005. After UPN merged with The WB to form The CW the following year, the show aired its remaining three seasons. In 2009, Rock announced that the series' end had matched up with his own past and he felt it was time to end the show.[8][9][10]
The show is a family sitcom, patterned on Chris Rock's recollection of his teenage years growing up in the 1980s with a wholesome, tight-knit, African-American family, while living in drug-and-gang infested Bedford–Stuyvesant, a neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, and also attending a cross-town, all-white public high school.[4][5][7][10][12]
The real-life Chris Rock provides intermittent narration throughout the show, at times interjecting his young self's thoughts or sometimes simply recounting the situation he's describing.
Chris's family is firmly dominated by strong, loving parents: Julius, a hard-working, frugal laborer who works two jobs while remaining carefully loyal to his wife,[3][11][12] Rochelle, a conscientious and powerful housewife and mother who is fiercely protective of the family, while also being fiercely demanding of all in it, especially eldest son Chris.[3][11][12]
The series starts just after the parents have moved their children "out of the [low-income housing] projects," and into a more-upscale two-story apartment in Brooklyn's Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood—known for its roughness as "Bed-Stuy, do-or-die."[4][12]
Chris is a skinny, nerdy young teen.[3][11] His mother decides to send him to a mostly-white school across town ("two bus rides away") in an ethnic-Italian neighborhood to ensure he gets a better education. The school is slyly named "Corleone Junior High School" (an apparent reference to the fictional Corleone mafia family from the movie The Godfather or its real-life parallel, the Corleonesi).[6][4][12]
Chris finds the new school difficult to adjust to because of social ostracism and the ire of a red-haired bully named Caruso. Ms. Morello, a well-meaning white teacher, treats Chris with naive, condescending assumptions derived from crude racial/ghetto stereotypes. The bright spot in school is Chris's best friend, Greg (played by Vincent Martella)—a smaller but similarly nerdy white kid.[3][5][11]
At home, Chris is often left in charge of his siblings—his younger-but-bigger brother, Drew, and an ornery little sister, Tonya.[4][12] Mother Rochelle usually keeps a firm grip on the family, while their exhausted breadwinner father, Julius, struggles to catch a little sleep between jobs.[12]
Chris interacts with various characters in the neighborhood—diverse personalities based on real people Rock would see as a kid in his community. These personalities include some hoodlums who try to take advantage of him, a demented old homeless man nicknamed Kill Moves, a shrewd, miserly-but-grandfatherly storekeeper named Doc, and Doc's neurotic, paranoid, combat-veteran nephew Monk. For several episodes, an overbearing neighbor lady is played by Whoopi Goldberg, grandmother of the pretty girl next door.
The show—laced with comedy and farce—is primarily about adolescence and family life in inner-city poverty, the determined struggles of good, decent parents to provide a better life and values for their family, and the challenges their children present to them, and to each other.[3]
In Canada, the show has aired on the networks YTV and Much. In the UK, the show has aired on Channel 5, Paramount Comedy 1 and now Sky Comedy. In Brazil, the series premiered on RecordTV in October 2006 and, as of 2022, reruns are still regularly broadcast on Sundays due to its immense popularity in the country.
Everybody Hates Chris won NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series (for Ali LeRoi), Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series (for Tichina Arnold), and Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series (for Tyler James Williams).[14][15] It has also been nominated for a Golden Globe and three Emmy Awards. In December 2008, Entertainment Weekly listed the Kwanzaa episode from this show as seventh on the magazine's "Must List: 10 Holiday Things We Love."[16]
Home media
All four seasons of Everybody Hates Chris were released on DVD by Paramount (under the label CBS DVD) in Region 1 and Region 2.[17][18][19][20] The complete series was released on DVD on August 18, 2009.[21]
Streaming
The series is available to stream on Paramount+, Amazon Prime Video (through Paramount+), Hulu and Peacock, and can be streamed for free on Crackle, CW Seed, ITV X, Pluto TV, and Tubi.[22] The series is often streamed with Season 1 incomplete, but Paramount+ and Peacock now have the complete season set.
In Mexico the series is available to stream on HBO Max.
Reboot
In March 2021, an animated reboot of the series was announced to be in development with Chris Rock returning as narrator.[23] In July 2021, Sanjay Shah, executive producer and co-showrunner of Central Park, was reported to be writing and producing the reboot.[24] In August 2022, it was reported the animated reboot would be titled Everybody Still Hates Chris.[10] It will be released on Comedy Central and Paramount+.
