The Wayans Bros. | |
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Season 3 intertitle
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Created by |
Shawn Wayans Marlon Wayans Leslie Ray David Steven Simon |
Starring |
Marlon Wayans Shawn Wayans John Witherspoon Anna Maria Horsford Lela Rochon Paula Jai Parker Jill Tasker |
Theme music composer | Tom Rizzo (season 3) Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Omar Epps and Alan Cohn (seasons 4-5) |
Opening theme | "Electric Relaxation" (instrumental) by A Tribe Called Quest |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language(s) | English |
No. of seasons | 5 |
No. of episodes | 101 (list of episodes) |
Production | |
Executive producer(s) |
Billy Van Zandt & Jane Milmore (season 1) Rick Hawkins (season 2) Phil Kellard & Tom Moore (seasons 3–5) |
Location(s) | Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank, California (taping location) |
Camera setup | Videotape; Multi-camera |
Running time | Approx. 21 minutes |
Production company(s) | Baby Way Productions Next to Last Productions Warner Bros. Television |
Distributor | Warner Bros. Television Distribution |
Release | |
Original network | The WB |
Picture format | 480i (SDTV) |
Original release | January 11, 1995 | – May 20, 1999
The Wayans Bros. is a sitcom that aired from January 1995 to May 1999 on The WB Television Network. The series starred real-life brothers Shawn and Marlon Wayans. The series also starred John Witherspoon and Anna Maria Horsford (season 2 onward).
Shawn and Marlon Williams (Shawn Wayans and Marlon Wayans) are brothers who live in an apartment on 126th street in Harlem. Shawn owns a local newsstand, where he and his brother Marlon work on a daily basis. In the show's second season (in 1995), the newsstand and Pops' Joint (the restaurant owned by their father, John "Pops" Williams (John Witherspoon) were moved downtown into the fictional Neidermeyer Building, in Rockefeller Center, where Dee Baxter (Anna Maria Horsford (season 2 onward) works as a security guard.
Many transitions were made in season 2:
The Wayans Bros. was the first of the four sitcoms that aired as part of the original Wednesday night two-hour lineup that helped launch the network (along with Unhappily Ever After, The Parent 'Hood and the short-lived Muscle). While in development, the series' working title was initially supposed to have been Brother to Brother, before the name of the series changed to The Wayans Bros.
In the show's second season, in 1995 Pops' Joint (the restaurant owned by Shawn and Marlon's father, John "Pops" Williams) was moved into the Neidermeyer Building, where the location was changed from Harlem to Rockefeller Center, Manhattan. The series was cancelled due to declining ratings and was not given a proper finale. While the series did not end on a cliffhanger, it was noted in Scary Movie in 2000, Shawn Wayans' character was attacking a monster and in the fight he mentioned 'And the Wayans Brothers was cancelled, we ran for 5 seasons and didn't get a final episode.'