In 1994, television legend Norman Lear decided to go back to the well. But he didn't just revisit a character or a catchphrase. He went back to a physical location—one of the most famous addresses in sitcom history.
704 Hauser Street.
Most people remember the house as the home of Archie Bunker, the armchair philosopher of the 1970s who sparred with his liberal son-in-law. But by the early '90s, the Bunkers were long gone. Lear’s idea was gutsy: move a Black family into Archie’s old house and flip the entire political dynamic on its head.
It was a fascinating experiment.
Honestly, the show is a bit of a "lost" artifact now. It only lasted five episodes on CBS before the network pulled the plug, leaving one episode gathering dust in a vault somewhere. If you talk to die-hard TV buffs, they’ll tell you it was either a misunderstood gem or a desperate attempt to capture lightning in a bottle for the second time.
Why the 704 Hauser TV Show Reversed Everything
The genius—or the problem, depending on who you ask—of 704 Hauser was the role reversal. In the original All in the Family, you had a conservative father clashing with a liberal son.
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In this new version, Ernie Cumberbatch (played by the incredible John Amos) was a staunch, working-class liberal. He was a veteran of the civil rights movement. He had fought the good fight.
Then there was his son, Thurgood "Goodie" Cumberbatch.
Goodie was an arch-conservative. He listened to Rush Limbaugh. He preached abstinence. He was everything his father had spent his life protesting against. To make things even more "Lear-esque," Goodie was dating a white Jewish woman named Cherlyn, played by a then-up-and-coming Maura Tierney.
The friction was immediate. It was loud. It was classic Norman Lear.
A Cast That Deserved Better
You can't talk about this show without mentioning John Amos. Most people know him as James Evans from Good Times, another Lear spin-off. There’s a weird bit of TV "meta-logic" here: Amos was playing a completely different character in the same universe where he was already a legend.
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- John Amos (Ernie): The liberal patriarch who couldn't believe his son turned out "right-wing."
- Lynnie Godfrey (Rose): The pragmatic mother who often had to mediate the shouting matches.
- T.E. Russell (Goodie): The son who represented the growing movement of Black conservatism in the '90s.
- Maura Tierney (Cherlyn): The girlfriend caught in the crossfire of generational and political warfare.
The Ghost of Archie Bunker
The show didn't just use the address. It used the house.
The sets were rebuilt to look exactly like the Bunker residence, just updated for the 1990s. It felt like walking through a museum of TV history. In the very first episode, the show even brought back Joey Stivic—Archie's grandson—played by Casey Siemaszko.
Joey stops by the house just to see it again. It was a passing of the torch that felt heavy with nostalgia.
But nostalgia is a double-edged sword. Critics at the time, like those at Variety, felt the show was a bit "stale." They argued that while the politics had flipped, the formula felt like something out of 1974. The world had changed. The 1990s were the era of Seinfeld and Friends—shows about nothing. Lear wanted to talk about everything: race, religion, taxes, and the "culture wars."
Why Did It Fail So Fast?
CBS wasn't patient.
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The ratings weren't terrible, but they weren't great either. The show debuted to about 16 million viewers—numbers that would be a massive hit today but were "middling" back then.
Lear later lamented the cancellation. He felt that the networks had lost their nerve. He had plans for where these characters would go over the next six years. He wanted to see Goodie evolve and Ernie soften. Instead, we got five weeks of shouting and then silence.
Interestingly, the show tackled some heavy stuff in its short run. Episode three, "Ernie Live on Tape," dealt with Ernie being racially profiled by a security guard. It was a serious, gritty look at a problem that, sadly, hasn't gone away.
What You Can Learn From the Hauser Experiment
Looking back, the 704 Hauser TV show is a case study in how hard it is to reboot a legacy. You can change the faces and flip the scripts, but the "vibe" of a specific house or title carries massive expectations.
If you're a fan of TV history, the pilot is actually available as a bonus feature on the All in the Family complete series DVD set. It's worth a watch just to see John Amos chew the scenery in a cigar-chomping role that felt like a liberal version of Archie himself.
Next Steps for TV Historians:
Check out the pilot episode on the All in the Family Shout! Factory DVD set to see the Joey Stivic cameo. Then, compare the "Black Conservative" trope in this show to how it was handled years later in shows like black-ish—you’ll see that Lear was actually way ahead of his time in identifying that specific cultural friction point.