Degrassi Junior High season 1
The first season of Degrassi Junior High, a Canadian teen drama television series, aired in Canada from January 18, 1987, to May 3, 1987, consisting of thirteen episodes. The series follows the lives of a group of seventh and eighth grade school children attending the titular school as they face various issues and challenges such as child abuse, homophobia, teenage pregnancy, and body image. Filming for the season began on 8–10 July 1986 in Etobicoke, Ontario and wrapped in the winter of 1986.
The first season was broadcast on CBC Television on Sundays at 5:00pm. In the United States, the first season commenced airing on September 26, 1987, on PBS. In the United States, the first two seasons of the series were aired together as one twenty-six episode season. The season was released to DVD by WGBH Boston Home Video on February 1, 2005, in the United States, and by Force Entertainment on October 1, 2005, in Australia.
The season received a positive reception from critics, who acclaimed it as a realistic portrayal of teenagers that contrasted heavily with more moralistic, family-oriented programs of the time period. The episode "It's Late", where character Christine "Spike" Nelson becomes pregnant, would win an International Emmy for Children & Young People in November 1987. On the BBC in the United Kingdom, several episodes, including "It's Late", and "Rumour Has It", an episode about rumours of a teacher's homosexuality, were banned from airing, with the network ultimately not airing its second and third seasons..
Production
Schoolteacher Linda Schuyler and her partner Kit Hood founded the company Playing With Time, Inc. in 1976, to produce short films and documentaries. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Playing With Time produced a series of annual short films for CBC Television, beginning with 1979's Ida Makes a Movie, that implored the network to order a television series, which became known as The Kids of Degrassi Street. The series won several accolades during its run, including an International Emmy in 1986. Work on a series centering on a junior high school began in the early months of that year.Auditions took place throughout schools in Toronto; an estimated 300 kids auditioned and fifty-four were selected. The selected fifty-four would undergo a three-week workshop, that took place from 26 May to 13 June 1986, which helped them learn basic acting skills, techniques and improvisation and also included seminars in the behind-the-scenes aspects of production. 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. Characters would be developed based on the strengths of the actors and those who did exceptionally well would be given bigger roles. The actors comprised The Playing With Time Repertory Company which at its peak consisted of sixty-five kids. According to actress Stacie Mistysyn, who had previously starred on Kids as Lisa Canard and would return as Caitlin Ryan, the actors of Kids were offered a choice between playing new characters, or reprising their original roles; all except one actor chose to play new characters.
Schuyler and Hood saw Degrassi Junior High as a response to what they felt was a lack of television series that properly depicted teenagers, with the pair as well as critics citing family-oriented moralistic shows. Furthermore, Schuyler expressed dissatisfaction at the practice of casting older people to play teenagers prevalent in American teen media, and sought to cast real, inexperienced teenagers instead.