Malcolm-Jamal Warner, the actor, who has died aged 54, was cast as Theo Huxtable in the sitcom The Cosby Show at the age of 13, and over the course of some 200 episodes became one of US television’s best-known teenagers.

As Theo Huxtable, Malcolm-Jamal Warner had to represent young Black men on the highest-rated show on television while still appealing to middle America, writes Dart Adams. Watching another creative Black young man made me feel like I could also achieve big things,

Over the course of the show’s eight year run, this moment was not always taken as a given; the son, Theo Huxtable, was for years presented as a chronic underachiever, more interested in the typical trappings of teenage boyhood—friends,