227 (TV series)

227 is an American sitcom television series that originally aired on NBC from September 14, 1985, to May 6, 1990. The series, created by C.J. Banks and Bill Boulware, stars Marla Gibbs as Mary Jenkins, a sharp-tongued, inner-city resident gossip and housewife. Other major characters include her husband Lester (Hal Williams), neighbor Sandra Clark (Jackée Harry), friend and landlady Rose Holloway (Alaina Reed Hall), friend and neighbor Pearl Shay (Helen Martin) and Mary and Lester's daughter Brenda (Regina King).

Origins

The series was adapted from Two Twenty Seven, a stage play written in 1978 by Christine Houston about the lives of women in a predominantly Black apartment building in 1950s Chicago. The setting of the series, however, was changed to present-day Washington, D.C. The show was created as a starring vehicle for Marla Gibbs, who had become famous as Florence Johnston, the maid on The Jeffersons, and had starred in Houston's play in Los Angeles. This role was similar in nature to that of tart-tongued Florence; Gibbs's character, housewife Mary Jenkins, loved a good gossip and often spoke what she thought, with sometimes not-so-favorable results. Gibbs was also credited as a "creative consultant" for the series.

According to Gibbs, 227 was originally offered to ABC but sold to NBC. Since The Jeffersons was still on the air on CBS, the new show was scheduled to begin in 1986. However, when The Jeffersons was unexpectedly canceled in 1985, Gibbs was free to begin, and 227 went into production a year earlier than had been previously planned.

Synopsis

227 followed the lives of people in a middle-class apartment building, 227 Lexington Place (the numerical address from which the sitcom's name comes), in a Black neighborhood in Northeast, Washington, D.C. The show was centered around Mary Jenkins (Marla Gibbs), a nosy and tart-tongued but loving housewife.