Tyler Perry's House of Payne is an American comedy-drama television series created and produced by playwright, director, and producer Tyler Perry. The show revolved around a multi-generational family living under one roof in Atlanta led by patriarch Curtis Payne and his wife Ella. The show premiered in syndication on June 21, 2006, and new episodes were broadcast exclusively on TBS from June 6, 2007, until August 10, 2012. While primarily a comedy sitcom, House of Payne was known for featuring dark themes and subject matter, such as substance abuse and addiction. It also had elements of slapstick. The storyline of the show is serialized, with many references to past episodes, creating a continuing story arc. House of Payne aired more episodes than any other television series with a predominantly African American cast, surpassing The Jeffersons, Family Matters and The Cosby Show.

The Cosby Show is an American television situation comedy starring Bill Cosby, which aired for eight seasons on NBC from September 20, 1984 until April 30, 1992. The show focuses on the Huxtable family, an upper middle-class African-American family living in Brooklyn, New York. According to TV Guide, the show "was TV's biggest hit in the 1980s, and almost single-handedly revived the sitcom genre and NBC's ratings fortunes". Originally, the show had been pitched to ABC, which rejected it. Entertainment Weekly stated that The Cosby Show helped to make possible a larger variety of shows based on people of African descent, from In Living Color to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The Cosby Show was based on comedy routines in Cosby's standup act, which were based on his family life. Other sitcoms, such as Home Improvement and Everybody Loves Raymond, would later follow that pattern. The show spawned the spin-off A Different World, which ran for six seasons from 1987 to 1993.