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.

The actor, who died last week, carried the burden of representing the meritocratic Black boy par excellence, and made it look easy.

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,