Hillman College might be the most vividly realized institution of higher learning that never cashed an actual tuition check.
uncertain
that → realize → check
The fictional historically Black college at the heart of A Different World, the generation-defining NBC sitcom that ran for six seasons beginning in 1987, has school colors (maroon and white) and a Latin motto (“Deus nondum te confecit,” or “God is not done with you yet”).
asserted
God → define → you
It has sports teams, Greek organizations, homecoming traditions.
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It → have → teams
The campus is constantly abuzz, with political debates animating common rooms and flirtations heating up over comfort food at Hillman’s hangout of choice, The Pit.
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flirtations → animate → choice
But what really makes the school is its people—Black teens from every conceivable background forging lifelong friendships under the empathetic eyes of adults committed to helping them thrive and mature.
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them → make → adults
Which is why, even as the TV of the ’80s and ’90s is strip-mined for blandly familiar streaming content, Hillman feels like a place worth revisiting.
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Hillman → mine → place
Also titled A Different World, Netflix’s just-released revival does precisely that in a 10-episode dramedy set among Gen Z freshmen.
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revival → title → freshmen
Yet it also maintains a strong connection to the past, re-enlisting as an executive producer and director Debbie Allen, the architect of the series’ greatness, and making its protagonist the daughter of the opposites-attract golden couple Dwayne Wayne (Kadeem Hardison) and Whitley Gilbert-Wayne (Jasmine Guy).
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protagonist → maintain → Wayne
The new episodes don’t have quite the same spark of energy and wit that made the original a classic; stylistically, they share more with contemporary teen dramas like the HBCU-set All American: Homecoming and the straight-faced Fresh Prince reboot Bel-Air, whose writer and producer Felicia Pride helms this sequel.
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Pride → have → sequel
But the show does share with its predecessor vibrant characters, appealing performances, and a keen sense of how the personal intersects with the political.
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personal → share → political
It’s more than enough to justify the return trip.
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It → ’ → trip
Relatable like her dad, a brilliant mathematician from pre-gentrification Brooklyn, but also entitled like her posh Southern belle mom, Maleah Joi Moon’s Deborah Wayne makes an ideal ingénue, prone to frustrating choices yet still somehow charming.
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Wayne → make → choices
She’s the ultimate Hillman legacy; not only are her parents both grads, but Dwayne is now provost and Whitley (a beauty mogul, to no one’s surprise)
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Dwayne → ’ → ?
is as involved in the alumni scene as you’d expect the namesake of Gilbert Hall to be.
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namesake → expect → Hall
So this freshman grew up with campus fixtures like Prof. Freddie Brooks (Cree Summer, reprising her role as Hillman’s resident social justice crusader) and Pit proprietor Nellie Gaines (Famecia Ward, playing the granddaughter of the late Lou Myers’s beloved character, Vernon Gaines).
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freshman → grow → character
Along with satisfying the nostalgia of longtime fans, these relationships give the show access to the high-stakes higher-ed bureaucracy students rarely glimpse.
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students → satisfy → bureaucracy
It’s an effective setup, although a plot that puts the Waynes’ marriage in peril, calling back to their will-they-or-won’t-they courtship, doesn’t feel entirely earned, let alone necessary.
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they → ’ → courtship
And that’s as it should be.
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it → ’ → ?
Deborah has unfinished business—of the romantic sort, naturally—with Shaquille (Cornell Young IV), the football-star son of her dad’s old roommate, smooth schemer Ron Johnson (Darryl M. Bell).
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Deborah → have → roommate
Despite being second-generation Hillmanites, neither is sure they truly belong there.
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they → belong → ?
Shaquille had Division 1 teams fighting over him but opted to make a statement by playing for an HBCU instead.
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teams → have → HBCU
An aspiring artist whose wild behavior ruined her chances at NYU, Deborah had no alternative.
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Deborah → aspire → alternative
Her inner circle includes roommate Rashida Duvall (Alijah Kai, another standout), a driven scholarship student who calls herself “the Simone Biles of school” and whose eventual bond with Deborah echoes Whitley’s odd-couple friendship with her own Hillman roommate, Kim (Charnele Brown, who also guest stars).
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who → include → roommate
Hazel Henry (Kennedi Reece), whose church-girl innocence belies big ambitions, completes the trio.
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innocence → belie → trio
Among Shaquille’s boys are Kojo Achebe (Chibuikem Uche), whose aspirations of becoming a fashion designer don’t exactly thrill his strict African parents, and Amir Rodale (Jordan Aaron Hall), a formerly incarcerated student whose time in juvie continues to interfere with his life at Hillman.
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time → become → Hillman
Amir is also the franchise’s first gay main character, an identity that Hall and the writers navigate with grace and ease.
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Hall → navigate → grace
It’s a reverent reinvention, one that the people behind the first Different World clearly support.
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people → ’ → World
(Jada Pinkett Smith, Joe Morton, Glynn Turman, and Jenifer Lewis are just a few of the other past stars who appear.)
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who → appear → stars
Without defaulting to the Very Special Episodes that worked better in primetime than they do in a binge-dropped streaming season, Pride engages with issues relevant to her young, Black characters, often letting themes develop across episodes.
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themes → default → episodes
Allen’s groundbreaking storylines about apartheid protests, AIDS, and the censorship of rap lyrics have given way to ones that consider the stigma around learning disabilities, friction between African and Black American cultures, and HBCUs’ reliance on funding from an anti-DEI federal government.
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that → give → government
In one episode, a bomb threat forces students to realize the school they’d hoped would give them a four-year reprieve from racism is also uniquely vulnerable to it.
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they → force → it
Yet, true to its history, the show thoughtfully interweaves these topical beats into collegiate lives that revolve around schoolwork, romantic mess, friend-group drama, money troubles, dreams of the future.
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that → interweave → future
Once it got past a first season weighed down by its connection, via Lisa Bonet’s original lead, Denise Huxtable, to The Cosby Show and its since-disgraced creator, not to mention the odd gimmick of casting Marisa Tomei as Denise’s white roommate, A Different World was lightning in a bottle.
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World → get → bottle
Allen used the jaunty spirit of sitcoms and outsize characters like Whitley and Ron to create 23-minute, multicam stage plays funny, dynamic, and daring enough to make viewers forget that our perspective on Hillman was confined to a handful of dorm-room and common-space interiors.
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perspective → use → interiors
Thanks in part to a talented cast who went on to become fixtures of movies and TV, and in part to the optimism of a post-civil-rights generation that, for all its many challenges, had reason to believe progress would continue, it was possible to spotlight injustice and do pratfalls and lovers’ tiffs in the same scene.
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it → go → scene
Whitley and Dwayne were honeymooning in LA when the Rodney King verdict came down!
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verdict → honeymoon → LA
Roseanne and Tom Arnold, of all people, guest-starred as white looters.
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Roseanne → star → looters
(Susan Fales-Hill, then the head writer, has said she thinks the episode sealed the show’s cancellation.)
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episode → say → cancellation
Pride was probably wise not to try recreating that balance of serious and silly.
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Pride → try → serious
It might have come off as trivializing to a generation raised amid bigoted, post-Obama backlash and choose-your-own-apocalypse visions of doom within their lifetimes.
uncertain
It → come → lifetimes
…and 6 more, not listed.
The Aporia
