Webster on dvd set in Chicago, revolves around Webster Long, a seven-year-old black orphan (Emmanuel Lewis) whose biological parents, Travis and Gert Long, were recently killed in a car accident. He is then taken in by retired football star George Papadapolis (Alex Karras), with whom Travis had played professional football in the 1970s, and his wife Katherine (Susan Clark), an upper crust socialite with no housekeeping skills whatsoever George and Katherine's new married life was part of the premise, but it was Webster who was the main focus of the show. The Papadopolises lived in a luxurious high-rise apartment in Chicago, with burly George now working as a sportscaster at local station WBJX-TV, and Katherine becoming an accomplished family psychologist.

Sarcastic social climber Jerry Silver (Henry Polic II) was Katherine's male secretary, who was her professional and personal confidant. Although the series is set in Chicago, the apartment complex shown in exterior shots of the first two seasons is actually The Mirabella condominium building, located at 10430 Wilshire Blvd, in the Westwood district of Los Angeles, California.

Webster also had an uncle, Phillip Long, played by Ben Vereen, who had issues with Webster living with a white couple and sought to adopt him and take him to live in Chicago's South Side, not to mention acrimony between himself and George. After his numerous attempts at the latter during the second season, Phillip moved to Hollywood to launch an acting career. In the later seasons, Phillip would return in a few guest appearances.

Shortly into the second season, Webster accidentally burned down the family's apartment with a science kit and the family moved to a large Victorian house located at 1432 North State Parkway in Chicago's Gold Coast.[2]

The show continued on with its usual tone, besides some of the newer inventive plots. Many more of Webster's friends and classmates passed through, including Rob Whitaker (Chad Allen). A recent product of divorce whose mother had custody of him, Rob was kidnapped by his father in one episode, which led the Papadopolises, Rob's mother, and the community to rally in hopes of finding him.

When he returned, it was Katherine who successfully intervened with Rob's father. Later in the third season, for unexplained reasons, Rob's last name became Joiner. Bill and Cassie Parker (Eugene Roche and Cathryn Damon) leased the Victorian house to the Papadopolises during the show's second and third seasons, until George and Katherine bought it outright (this was Damon's last TV series role, as she died from cancer a year after leaving Webster).

Jerry, who was a more prominent member of show in the first season (receiving the "co-starring" heading in the opening credits after the show's three leads), had since become an occasional character, but would continue for the entire series. George's jovial aging father, George Sr. (Jack Kruschen), known to all as "Papa" Papadopolis, began appearing occasionally in the fall of 1985. Over the course of the fourth season, ratings dropped sharply. The show, which had been a Nielsen top 30 series, ranked 46th by the end of the season. ABC chose not to renew Webster.

The series' popularity and interest among younger viewers prompted Webster to continue in first-run syndication starting in fall of 1987. At this time, the Papadopolis household gained a new member in George's nephew Nicky (Corin Nemec), who moved in when his parents went off to work in Nigeria, on assignment for the United Nations.

Nicky provided Webster with a sort of "brother figure", and the two got along famously. However, Nicky was gone from the show at the start of season six (Nemec would later reach greater fame as the star of Fox's Parker Lewis Can't Lose).

While plots continued to mature somewhat with Webster's onset of pre-teendom, the same "cutesy factor" remained, thanks in part to Lewis' timing and portrayal. However, this was something Lewis was slowly getting tired of, despite the fact that he had more creative control over Webster at this point (with Emmanuel Lewis Entertainment Enterprises co-producing with Karras and Clark's Georgian Bay Ltd.).

Early in the 1988-89 season, with Lewis clearly outgrowing the title role, Karras and Clark also decided that the time was right to move on. The last episode was taped in early 1989 (but aired that March), which did not signify an end of any sort, but was played out as a high event - the cast went on a space adventure with guest star Michael Dorn as Lt. Worf, from Star Trek: The Next Generation (in the episode, "Webtrek").

USA Network aired reruns of the show from September 22, 1997 to March 13, 1998. It also aired on WGN September 21, 1998 to September 2, 1999 (which was, as of January 2010, the last time that Webster appeared on national television).

Webster also aired on Chicago's local station MeTV and WMEU-CA (now known as MeTV's sister station MeToo since March 2008) from 2006-09.