Diff'rent Strokes is an American television sitcom, which aired on NBC from November 3, 1978, to May 4, 1985. The series stars Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges as Arnold and Willis Jackson, two black boys from Harlem taken in by a rich white Park Avenue businessman and his daughter. During the first season and the first half of the second season, Charlotte Rae also starred, as Mrs. Edna Garrett, the Drummonds' first housekeeper, who spun off into her own sitcom, The Facts of Life.