The rest of the synopsis for the series reads:
Along the way, she’s joined by a new generation that reflects the breadth of Black life on campus: Rashida Duvall (Alijah Kai), a first‑gen criminal justice major; Shaquille Johnson (Cornell Young IV), a five‑star athlete choosing legacy; Amir Rodale (Jordan Aaron Hall), a sharp psych major better at fixing everyone else’s problems than facing his own; Hazel Henry (Kennedi Reece), a church‑raised small‑town girl defining her own values; and Kojo Achebe (Chibuikem Uche), a Ghanaian‑Nigerian fashion entrepreneur finding the courage to follow his vision. Legacy favorites also return, including Whitley Gilbert (Jasmine Guy), Dwayne Wayne (Kadeem Hardison), Freddie Brooks (Cree Summer), and Ron Johnson (Darryl M. Bell).
Set against the rituals, humor, and nuances of an HBCU, A Different World is a hopeful dramedy, full of heart and unapologetically centered on the richness and complexity of the Black experience.
A Different World began in 1987 as a spinoff to The Cosby Show focused on Lisa Bonet’s Denise Huxtable, though it forged its own identity fairly quickly. Wrote Emily St. James for this site in 2013, “it may have been one of the most forthright series about the black experience in the United States, digging deep into all sorts of questions about being part of a microcosm in a larger society that didn’t always reflect that microcosm’s needs and wants. And it managed to accomplish all of this while staying a top-10 Nielsen hit.” We’ll see how the Netflix take on it compares when it premieres on September 24.
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