The new Bill Cosby documentary 'We Need to Talk About Cosby' refuses to make a case against him

• Showtime's four-part series "We Need to Talk About Cosby" debuted at Sundance over the weekend.
• Comedian W. Kamau Bell, a self-described "child" of Cosby, directs.

At the outset of "We Need to Talk About Cosby," the new Showtime documentary about the comedian, actor, and accused rapist Bill Cosby, director W. Kamau Bell concedes that over the last few years there has been a lot of talk about the man who was once known to millions as "America's dad."

"Honestly, it feels like everyone has weighed in," Bell says as a cacophony of images of people discussing Cosby during interviews and talk shows flash onscreen.

Bell is correct. The accusations in 2014 that Cosby had, across the span of his six-decade career, drugged, raped, and sexually harassed dozens of women made headlines across the world. (Cosby was convicted on three counts of aggravated indecent assault in 2018 and sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. Cosby's sentence, however, was overturned in 2021 after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that Cosby shouldn't have been charged due to a deal made by a former prosecutor.)

In this docuseries, which debuted as a part of the Sundance Film Festival over the weekend, Bell, a stand-up comedian best known as the host of CNN's documentary series "United Shades of America," guides sharp commentary with archival footage of Cosby's career.

In doing so, the comedian and filmmaker, who describes himself as a "child of Bill Cosby," refuses to make a case against his former hero but rather refuels established debates around his complicated legacy.

The documentary examines Cosby's alleged crimes against his legacy as a groundbreaking Black entertainer

Across four labored episodes, Bell interviews comedians, journalists, lawyers, and several survivors of Cosby's alleged sexual assaults.

Cosby's alleged crimes are recounted in graphic detail, and they are examined alongside extensive discussion of his ground-breaking legacy as a Black entertainer in the United States.

Bell makes the sophisticated argument that Cosby's positive representation of Blackness onscreen in his role as a largely apolitical middle-class doctor on the hit 90s comedy "The Cosby Show," for example, allowed him to challenge racial stereotypes while remaining inoffensive to predominantly white power structures. In turn, Bell says Cosby was gifted access to both social and economic capital that helped to shield him from the consequences of his alleged crimes.

There are several points throughout the documentary when Bell's contributors begin to exhibit an uneasy admiration for Cosby's powers of deception, but Bell wisely retains his critical eye. Later in the series, the documentary takes aim at specific individuals and institutions that aided Cosby's career and alleged crimes.

The academic Marc Lamont Hill, for example, breaks down how Cosby made monetary donations to academic institutions such as Temple University in Philadelphia to acquire academic honors, influence, and the trust of the American public.

These themes are tackled with varying levels of maturity across the four episodes. And while they remain disturbing, they are not new or groundbreaking. Critics and commentators have rightly highlighted the link between Cosby's proximity to social movements and America's elite with his ability to evade justice since stories of his alleged crimes started to surface.

So one can only ask why are we here ... again? And who is the collective 'we' Bell is trying to summon in the title of this documentary?

'We Need to Talk About Cosby' loses focus as it tries to reach a conclusion on Cosby's legacy

As the last episode in the series draws to a close, Bell reveals his true preoccupation. "Can you separate the art from the artist?" he ponders in his concluding statements.

At this moment, the documentary changes. It is no longer an examination of Cosby's legacy but an exercise in endurance. Bell is interested in how bad a set of allegations has to be before fans turn away. This may have been a good starting point for a discussion on the social media app Clubhouse, but it is not a sufficient starting point for a 240-minute Showtime documentary.

The more interesting thesis lies in an interrogation of the power imbalances that forced Cosby's alleged victims to stay quiet for so long and continue to structure American society as well as Hollywood's indifference to accused rapists and abusers when they can make film studios and network executives a buck. Not to mention the American legal system that allowed Cosby to walk out of prison last year and the precedent it may set to convict accused sexual abusers in the future.

To these topics, Bell only scratches the surface.

Grade: C

"We Need to Talk About Cosby" screened at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and will premiere on Showtime on January 30.