This isn’t the Good Times of your childhood.
Yvette Nicole Brown, who voices the character of Beverly Evans in the new animated version of Good Times for Netflix, promises it will be an “edgier, more irreverent” reboot of Norman Lear‘s groundbreaking TV sitcom.
After one of Brown’s followers wrote on X Wednesday that “I’m surprised you attached yourself to this project. Looks nothing like the show we grew up on,” Brown responded with a promise that the reboot will offer as much, if not more, than the original.
“This show is edgier and more irreverent than the Good Times of our childhood but it’s still a show about family, fighting the system and working to make things better despite where you start out in the world,” Brown wrote. “That 100% lines up with my values.”
Netflix slotted Friday, April 12 for the premiere of Good Times. Besides Brown as matriarch Beverly Evans, it features J.B. Smoove as Reggie Evans, Jay Pharoah as Junior Evans, Marsai Martin as Grey Evans, Gerald “Slink” Johnson as Dalvin Evans and Rashida “Sheedz” Olayiwola as Lashes by Lisa.
Per the logline, the animated Good Times series finds the latest generation of the Evans family, cab driver Reggie (Smoove) and his wife, the ever-aspirational Beverly (Brown), scratching and surviving in one of the last remaining housing projects in Chicago along with their teenage artist son, Junior (Pharoah), activist daughter Grey (Martin), and drug dealing infant son, Dalvin (Johnson). It turns out the more things change the more they stay the same and keeping your head above water in a system with its knee on your neck is as challenging as ever. The only thing tougher than life is love, but in this family, there’s more than enough to go around.
Lear’s Act III Productions, Steph Curry’s Unanimous Media, Seth MacFarlane’s Fuzzy Door, and Sony Pictures Television developed the project, with Ranada Shepard serving as executive producer and showrunner. Executive Producers include Lear, Brent Miller (Act III Productions), Curry, Erick Peyton & Jeron Smith (Unanimous Media), and MacFarlane & Erica Huggins (Fuzzy Door). Sony Pictures Television produces.