For her husband, who is the showrunner and an executive producer of “Black Lightning and has an executive producer credit on “Love Is __,” the memories are a bit jarring. “It is definitely a bit surreal to watch those moments and recognize certain things that are from our lives,” Mr. Akil said.

Capturing the intensity and intimacy of such a complicated relationship could have been daunting for the cast. “I wanted to get as close to Salim as possible,” Mr. Catlett, who also is a writer on the show, said. “I remember watching him look at Mara once on the set of ‘Black Lightning.’ He later posted that image on Instagram with the phrase ‘Panacea.’” Mr. Catlett recalled that in that moment, he “understood what it meant in the script when it said, ‘Nuri saved my life.’ If I get the essence of how that man looked at that woman then there is nothing else as an actor I need to know.”

Such nuanced representations of African-American heterosexual romance can be readily found now on shows like “This Is Us,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Queen Sugar” and “Insecure.” But these story lines were significantly less textured in 1990s black sitcoms. At the time, audiences were more likely to see these images in a film like Theodore Witcher’s 1997 “Love Jones,” an indie film turned cult classic that Ms. Akil invoked as a model for her show as well.

The casting of Kadeem Hardison, best known for playing Dwayne Wayne on “The Cosby Show” spinoff “A Different World,” as the fictional executive producer of “Marvin” allows “Love Is __” to make its most playful meta commentary on the limits imposed on the 1990s black sitcom. “I know that Mara was inspired by what she saw me and Jasmine Guy doing when we played Dwayne and Whitley on ‘A Different World,’” Mr. Hardison said of the show set on the campus of the historically black Hillman College.