We Need to Talk About Cosby charts the fractured legacy of 'America's Dad'

I have to laugh as much as roll my eyes when this routine unfolds - a shrug of the shoulders, an expression of helpless bewilderment - because it never fails to remind me of the Bill Cosby tape we used to listen to in the car when I was a child.

The cassette comprised some of the American comedian's most well-known stand-up hits, all free of profanity and many riffing on some rite of family passage. As well as the "there is no change" act, the tape included his famous material on going to the dentist, a story about a mystifying food source known as "chitlins", a bit about stoners visiting Burger King and a somewhat befuddling tale (from my pre-pubescent perspective, at least) about furtive pubescent boys bumping into each other early in the morning at the laundromat to wash their bedsheets.

This was about the time Cosby was a prolific content creator (Fat Albert was still screening on Australian TV) yet a few years away from the global mega-stardom he would acquire once his NBC sitcom The Cosby Show premiered in 1984.

The profound impact that series had on black American culture, let alone pop culture in general, was unprecedented and forms the basis for the third episode of the four-part Showtime docuseries We Need to Talk About Cosby streaming on Paramount+.

This powerful and classy production written and directed by W. Kamua Bell seeks to probe the deep trauma inflicted on a nation, and even farther-flung corners of the Western world, when it became clear the entertainer once known as "America's dad" was a sexual predator whose modus operandi involved drugging his victims.

Cosby was convicted of such a crime in 2018. His conviction was overturned in 2021 on a technicality, a decision described in the doco as "a good decision by the Supreme Court for a bad man".

As the title suggests, We Need to Talk About Cosby brings Americans, somewhat reluctantly, to the table, or perhaps more accurately, the psychiatrist's couch, to discuss how they feel about the whole Cosby phenomenon; a multi-generational betrayal, a Hollywood hoodwink beyond Jekyll and Hyde proportions.

Bell personifies the kind of American left torn and nonplussed by Cosby's fall from grace and the trail of destruction left in his wake. The filmmaker calls himself a child of Billy Cosby, a black man raised by Fat Albert and The Cosby Show, who would be inspired to pursue a career in stand-up comedy.

On one hand, Bell's documentary follows a traditional path, tracking Cosby's trajectory from a charismatic and "raceless" stand-up comedian from Philadelphia, to an actor who breaks new ground by co-starring in his own 1960s TV series (I Spy with Robert Culp) to a didactic, supercilious figure who parlays his fame and clout to champion such issues as education. But, on the other hand, We Need to Talk About Cosby is more personal, featuring interviews with alleged victims as well as entertainers and experts who weigh in on the fault lines the whole painful affair has ploughed into the cultural landscape.

As well as the blisteringly effective use of timelines to hammer home the sheer number of alleged victims who would cross paths with Cosby as his career progressed, and snippets of the performer discussing his apparent enthusiasm for introducing foreign substances into beverages, Bell gives his interviewees tablets via which they can watch the star ply his trade over the decades. It's through such a simple device we're provided glimpses of intimacy; smiles and memories surface as each subject is returned to a time and place when Billy Cosby represented something positive.

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It's this paradox Bell is determined to confront: how such a monster could be responsible for so much that was good and special and formative.

This hypocrisy (outed onstage by stand-up comedian Hannibal Buress in 2014) could not be brought to sharper relief when we return to The Cosby Show, the sitcom about an affluent African American family led by lawyer/doctor mum and dad, which at its height attracted a staggering audience of 60 million Americans. The Cosby Show ran from 1984 to 1992, reversed the slide of NBC and, on a weekly basis, provided the world with a glittering example of African American "excellence".

From the artwork of Varnette Honeywood and Ellis Wilson on the walls of the Huxtables' Brooklyn Heights brownstone, to the posters of Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis plastered on the back of teenage bedroom doors, to copies of Ebony magazine on the coffee table, every single instalment of The Cosby Show was a celebration of a people.

And so came the episode which captured this pride so perfectly and with so much joy - when the seven-strong Huxtable clan lip-synced Ray Charles' Night Time is the Right Time as a 49th wedding anniversary gift to Cosby's enraptured screen parents.

Even knowing what we all know now, it's impossible not to watch this scene - as those in Bell's doco do - with an ear-to-ear grin and marvel at its brilliance.

America's Cosby conundrum.