There’s no presumption of innocence in W. Kamau Bell’s “We Need to Talk About Cosby,” which isn’t surprising: Bill Cosby’s 2018 conviction on three counts of aggravated indecent assault was overturned last year by a ruling that didn’t refute the evidence against him, only the prosecutor’s decision to use it. So while the comedian’s legal problems may have expired, so has his career.

Mr. Bell, a comedian and social critic, isn’t really interested in Mr. Cosby’s legal status, though: He’s interested in the man’s legacy. What he finds in his sometimes angry, often dismaying examination of the Cosby saga is a sense of outrage, betrayal and ultimately sadness, especially among the Black Americans he interviews; they wear, almost uniformly, the look of people who’ve been suckered. Mr. Cosby represented the best. If you believe his very believable accusers—who are given much time here—he really was among the worst. But the issue is ticklish: A lot of people, Mr. Bell says in introductory voiceover, were asked to participate in his four-part project. “A lot of people said no.”

It’s understandable. And Mr. Bell, in very entertaining fashion, makes it even more so by accentuating what made Mr. Cosby great. He broke a significant color barrier on network TV with “I Spy” in the mid-’60s; he created a mini-industry by insisting on using black stuntmen on that show, rather than white guys in blackface. Race was virtually absent from his stand-up routines (“He was no Dick Gregory, ” someone says), but his career hewed to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ’s belief that Black entertainers needed to be seen at least as much as they needed to protest. Mr. Cosby cultivated an image as a nice guy, a clean comic, an educator and eventually, with “The Cosby Show,” as “America’s Dad.” He was so cool he did stand-up sitting down. Then, in 2014, the previously whispered allegations began to emerge more publicly.

By necessity, a good deal of what we get from “We Need to Talk About Cosby” is a rehash: During his nearly 60-year career, it is alleged, Mr. Cosby—who has always maintained his innocence—engaged in about 40 years of sexual abuse, routinely drugging young women and sexually assaulting them. (A timeline employed in episode 2, which tracks Mr. Cosby’s career moves alongside his alleged victims’ accounts, indicates an appalling consistency.) He incriminated himself in a deposition he gave in 2005 in a civil suit brought by Andrea Constand, which was what led to his

indictment, prosecution and 2018 conviction in Montgomery County, Pa.; an agreement with the then-prosecutor, that he wouldn’t be prosecuted after his testimony, led to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturning the conviction. Mr. Cosby had served three years in prison.

The recurring theme in Mr. Bell’s rigorous, riveting program is that Mr. Cosby’s image precluded a belief in his guilt: No one this nice could have done these things. The whole Cosby persona was a predator’s dream—and Mr. Bell casts it as such, surveying the Cosby career and finding in it a “trail of breadcrumbs” that should have revealed what was going on. In one sequence, Mr. Bell has several of his experts—academics, sex therapists, critical theorists—revisit an episode of “The Cosby Show” in which Cliff Huxtable reveals to wife Clair (Phylicia Rashad) that he has dosed his barbecue sauce with an aphrodisiac, which is why everyone is suddenly getting along. Several of the folks on hand—aghast—find this to be proof of guilt. Several others, probably rightly, advise against finding telltale psychological clues in everything Mr. Cosby did.

Mr. Bell neglects a very elemental fact of human existence: People compartmentalize. Not every decent thing Mr. Cosby did was necessarily calculated to distract. But there’s a lot of pain contained in “We Need to Talk About Cosby,” no small amount of it belonging to Mr. Bell himself. “I am a child of Cosby,” he admits ruefully, feeling as taken in as anyone else. Most of the time, he’s a clear-eyed documentarian. Once in a while, tears cloud his vision.

重点词汇

presumption of innocence the principle that one is considered innocent until proven guilty. 无罪推定原则，指未经审判证明有罪确定前，推定被控告者无罪。

dismay adj. /dsme/ causing consternation 沮丧的，焦虑的

He was dismayed at the cynicism of the youngsters. 他对年轻人们的愤世嫉俗感到伤心焦虑。

stuntmen n. /stntmn/ a person whose job is to do dangerous things in place of an actor in a film/movie, etc.; a person who does dangerous things in order to entertain people （电影等中的）特技替身演员；特技表演者

Before being an actor, he was a stuntman. 他是特技替身演员转做的演员。

incriminate v. /nkrmnet/ If something incriminates you, it suggests that you are responsible for something bad, especially a crime. 显示…有罪He claimed that the drugs had been planted to incriminate him. 他声称那些毒品是有人为了栽赃陷害他而放在那里的。

riveting adj. /rvt/ ( approving ) so interesting or exciting that it holds your attention completely 吸引人的；引人入胜的

What he says in this book is riveting. 他在书中所说的相当引人入胜。