Cosby to Return to Sitcoms With CBS Series

After bombing as a game-show host and a detective, Bill Cosby said Friday he is going back to the genre that made him one of the biggest TV star of the 1980s--the sitcom.

He has signed a multiyear, multi-series deal with CBS that will begin with a comedy series next fall in which he’ll star as a curmudgeon--”like Archie Bunker but without the racism and sexism.”

The new sitcom, loosely based on a British TV series called “One Foot in the Grave,” will be produced in New York by Tom Werner and Marcy Carsey, who produced his long-running NBC hit “The Cosby Show” and whose company produces “Roseanne,” “Grace Under Fire” and “Cybill.”

Since “The Cosby Show” ended in 1992, Cosby has failed with a syndicated game show, “You Bet Your Life,” and an NBC drama, “The Cosby Mysteries.” But CBS, trying to rebuild amid its worst prime-time season in history, clearly hopes his return to comedy with Werner and Carsey will do for the network what “The Cosby Show” did for NBC in 1984.

“Bill Cosby helped turn around NBC,” CBS Entertainment President Leslie Moonves said, “at a time when NBC was in third place and the sitcom had been declared dead.”

CBS won the Cosby series from competing networks with an unusual, two-year commitment to the as-yet untitled show, plus separate agreements with Cosby and Carsey-Werner to produce other programs for the network. Financial terms were not disclosed.

“We are putting our money where our mouth is” in terms of bringing talent to CBS, Moonves said.

“We went with CBS because they offered us the best deal and because there’s a family feeling here,” Cosby, 57, told a news conference. He added, however, that “the most important thing is not the deal--it’s the work. The writing on this show and the characters seemed fresh to me.”

Cosby said his character will be an older man who is “between jobs” and has been married for 35 years. Other characters will include both adults and children. No one else has been cast yet.