Good Times (1974)

Good Times starred Esther Rolle as Florida Evans and John Amos as her husband, James Evans, Sr.. The characters originated on the sitcom Maude as Florida and Henry Evans, with Florida employed as Maude's housekeeper in upstate New York. When producers decided to feature the Florida character in her own show, they applied retroactive changes to the characters' history. Henry's name became James, there was no mention of Maude, and the couple now lived in Chicago.

Good Times was based on Eric Monte's childhood (although one of the main characters name is "Michael Evans", which is the same name of co-creator, Mike Evans). Florida and James Evans had three children and the family rented an apartment in a housing project (implicitly the infamous Cabrini-Green projects, shown in the opening and closing credits but never mentioned by name on the show) in a poor, black neighborhood in inner-city Chicago. Florida and James' children were J. J. (Jimmie Walker), Thelma (Bern Nadette Stanis), and Michael (Ralph Carter). When the series began, J.J. and Thelma were seventeen and sixteen years old, respectively, and Michael, called "the militant midget" by his father due to his passionate activism, was eleven years old. Their exuberant neighbor, and Florida's best friend, was Willona Woods (played by Ja'net Du Bois), a recent divorcée.