Degrassi
Degrassi is a Canadian teen drama television franchise created by Kit Hood and Linda Schuyler, that follows the lives of youths attending the eponymous secondary school in Toronto. Each entry since 1987 has followed the same continuity. It is regarded as one of Canada's greatest and most successful media exports. Outside of television, the franchise comprises a variety of other media, such as companion novels, graphic novels, documentaries, soundtracks, and non-fiction works.
The franchise originated in the late 1970s, when ex-schoolteacher Schuyler formed a partnership with editor Hood to produce educational films and documentaries. The television success of Ida Makes a Movie, a short film based on a book by Kay Chorao, on the CBC, led to the pair creating subsequent installments which eventually began airing under the name The Kids of Degrassi Street. By the mid-1980s, the aging cast inspired the pair to develop a new series, Degrassi Junior High. Regarded as the first modern television teen drama, Degrassi Junior High gained widespread acclaim and established the franchise as a Canadian cultural icon. It enjoyed further acclaim and success after rebranding to Degrassi High, which chronicled the Degrassi Junior High cast's high school years. Creative exhaustion largely contributed to the franchise's initial end with the controversial post-graduation television film School's Out, which drew double the average viewership of the series, followed by the non-fiction documentary miniseries Degrassi Talks, in which actors spoke to teens nationwide about various issues.
Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High experienced sustained success in re-runs and syndication throughout the 1990s, aided by the emergence of online fan websites. A successful televised cast reunion in 1999 ultimately resulted in Schuyler creating a revival series, Degrassi: The Next Generation, which originally aired on CTV in Canada and The N in the United States. It focused on a new generation of students, augmented by select original characters in supporting roles. While respectably successful in Canada, The Next Generation made a significantly larger impact in the United States, and is credited with launching the careers of rapper Drake and actress Nina Dobrev. After nine seasons, The Next Generation was cancelled by CTV due to declining ratings; a subsequent deal with TeenNick resulted in a major retool of the series, its name changed simply to Degrassi and the format changed to a style reminiscent of telenovela. After five more seasons, it was cancelled by TeenNick in 2015. A deal with Netflix resulted in the short-lived co-production Degrassi: Next Class, which was geared toward Generation Z. It was cancelled in 2017, though this was not revealed until 2019. In January 2022, a new series was announced for HBO Max in which Schuyler would not be involved. It was ultimately cancelled as a result of the Warner Bros. Discovery merger, though WildBrain has indicated that they still intend to produce the series.
Degrassi has been widely acclaimed by critics over its four-decade history for its sympathetic portrayal of youth experiences and perceived authenticity compared to other teen-oriented media. It has faced international scrutiny and censorship since the late 1980s, particularly in regards to episodes depicting teenage pregnancy, abortion, and LGBT issues. Among the awards and accolades it has received include numerous Gemini Awards, two International Emmy Awards in 1985 and 1987, and a Peabody Award in 2010. The franchise was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame in December 2023.
History
1979–1986: ''The Kids of Degrassi Street''
In 1976, Linda Schuyler, a Grade 7 and Grade 8 media teacher at Earl Grey Senior Public School in Toronto, founded Playing With Time Inc. with her partner Kit Hood. Schuyler had met Hood, who had a career in editing television commercials, when she needed help from an experienced editor to save the "muddled footage" of one of her projects. As a media teacher, Schuyler encouraged her students to use video as a narrative tool. Bruce Mackey, Earl Grey's librarian and a friend of Schuyler, procured her several books about filmmaking upon her request, one being Ida Makes a Movie, by the American author Kay Chorao. Mackey did not realize that it was a children's book and discarded it, but Schuyler developed an interest in adapting the book into a film. Before leaving, Schuyler sought legal advice from Stephen Stohn, a young entertainment lawyer who had recently graduated from law school, and who would eventually become her producing partner and husband.Stohn recalled in his 2018 memoir Whatever It Takes that he advised Schuyler that being out of print, buying the rights to the book on her own would be "relatively straightforward", and that involving lawyers would make the process "unnecessarily complicated." Stohn instead gave Schuyler a boilerplate form for permission to take with her to New York. Schuyler purchased the rights for $200. The feline characters were changed into human children, and the story was also largely repurposed. The film featured production techniques that Schuyler and Kit Hood felt were missing from children's programming: it was shot in a cinéma vérité style, with handheld camera work and entirely on-location shooting. Mackey offered his home, 98 De Grassi Street, as a filming location.
Ida Makes a Movie premiered on CBC Television on December 8, 1979. Over the next couple of years, the network ordered two more short films. By 1982, they ordered five more episodes, developing the series of short films into a television series named The Kids of Degrassi Street. In 1985, the episode Griff Gets A Hand received an International Emmy Award for Best Children & Young People.
1986–1990: ''Degrassi Junior High, Degrassi High,'' and international success
A new Degrassi series began development in 1986, this time with new characters and centered around the fictional eponymous school near the same street. The first actor to audition for the new Degrassi series was Pat Mastroianni, who would later win the role of Joey Jeremiah. Several of the actors from The Kids of Degrassi Street would return with new roles, including Neil Hope, Stacie Mistysyn, Anais Granofsky, and Sarah Charlesworth. It was at this time that Playing With Time Inc. started a repertory company, with fifty children selected from auditions. The workshops would be repeated at the beginning of production for each season, as new cast members joined, and existing cast members underwent more advanced workshops. The repertory company also meant that even major characters could be relegated to the background if not the main focus of the episode, which according to Kathryn Ellis, was "nearly unheard-of on other television shows." Conversely, a background character could later be given more lines or a full role.The cast would have significant input into the writing of their characters, with Schuyler seeking opinions during every read-through, and cast members often talking about their experiences to writer Yan Moore, who would eventually adapt said experiences to their characters. The resulting series, Degrassi Junior High, premiered on CBC on January 18, 1987. The series marked the beginning of the franchise's canon, as characters from this series would appear as adults in later installments. The show also aired on PBS in the United States starting from September 1987. The show would feature one of the franchise's most well-known and influential storylines, in which 14 year old Christine "Spike" Nelson, portrayed by Amanda Stepto, becomes pregnant. The episode in which she discovers her pregnancy, "It's Late", the eleventh episode of the show's first season, would win an International Emmy Award, for which Emma Nelson, Spike's daughter and central character of the later series, was named. The popularity of the show led to international publicity tours by members of the cast throughout North America and parts of Europe.
Upon its debut, it immediately garnered critical acclaim in Canada, where it was considered to be an alternative to the American sitcoms of the era that were perceived as unrealistic and heavy-handed in their portrayal of societal issues. Although not as well known in the United States, it drew similar praise from the American media. Initially aired on Sundays at 5:00pm, Canadian critics believed the show deserved a better timeslot; Ivan Fecan, then the programming chief for CBC, was also a champion of the series, and had the series moved to primetime on Mondays at 8:30pm, in between Kate & Allie and Newhart. When Fecan called Schuyler to inform her of the move, she reportedly disagreed, feeling that the series wasn't ready for prime time. She eventually agreed to the decision, under the condition that if the move was unsuccessful, the series wouldn't be cancelled and instead be moved back to its original timeslot. After its move to prime time, the viewership increased by 40%, and by August 1988, it had become the highest-rated Canadian-made drama in Canada. The series also premiered in the United Kingdom on BBC1 in 1988, where it drew in a reported six million viewers, making it the highest-rated children's television series in the country and the show's largest audience. However, in spite of a publicity tour by actress Amanda Stepto, controversial episodes from its first season, including those centred on Stepto's character's pregnancy, were aired in a later timeslot on BBC2, and the network did not air its second and third seasons. The series established the franchise's popularity and longevity. By the time its follow-up began, it amassed over a million viewers weekly in Canada. In November 1988, after the premiere of the third and final season of Degrassi Junior High, Linda Schuyler alluded to the potential of a high-school followup when discussing the direction of the franchise with the Montreal Gazette, although she was unsure if it would go forward. It was decided to continue into high school as the actors were becoming older, which would also make way for more controversial topics, including abortion, which was addressed in the series premiere. According to Schuyler: "As the kids get older, the only way we can remain true to this age group is by growing with them. Therefore, the issues get more complex."
In the series finale of Degrassi Junior High, the titular school is destroyed in a fire. To keep the entire cast together, a creative decision was made to move the younger students displaced by the fire to the new school to join those that had already graduated. Conversely, the grade 7 students introduced in the third season of Degrassi Junior High were accelerated to grade 9 for an unspecified reason. To give the series a "harder-edged feel", several older characters were introduced. Reflecting the growing independence of the aging characters, Degrassi High began to give more focus to the characters' lives outside of school, with scenes taking place at nighttime, on the street, or at the characters' jobs. In contrast to Degrassi Junior High, in which the extras were still made known to the viewers, the newer series would include a team of "extra extras", who would simply appear for no other purpose than to fill the background. Degrassi High notably tackled HIV/AIDS, with the character Dwayne Myers, and suicide with the character Claude Tanner.
Despite continued success and demand from CBC, WGBH was finding it increasingly difficult to fund the show from the children's department of PBS, and were forced to back out. Combined with creative exhaustion, it was decided to end Degrassi ''High after its second season, and filming wrapped in October 1990. In November 1990, Schuyler explained to the Canadian Press that they wanted to end the series "while we were still feeling good about what we were doing." In addition, she noted that most of the cast were occupied with post-secondary education, and that she felt the show had already tackled what they had aimed to. Schuyler informed Ivan Fecan, then the programming chief of CBC and long-time supporter of Degrassi'', of their decision to end the series and suggested a feature-length finale as a compromise, which Fecan enthusiastically accepted and offered funding for.