This couldn’t come at a better time. Kate Kulzick recently asked me to take part in an upcoming episode of the Televerse podcast. The show’s guest spots feature in depth discussion of the guest’s favourite TV show from the past. Naturally I called dibs on The Wonder Years, one of my all time favourite series. The problem was that unlike most long-running popular American television series, The Wonder Years has still not yet been released on DVD despite popular demand – allegedly due to music licensing issues. However in a recent blog update on the Netflix website, Netflix stated that they would be adding The Wonder Years to their instant streaming service. Vulture is now reporting that all 115 episodes of the classic TV show have now made it to their streaming service with the soundtrack intact. Click here to watch the show, and remember to check out the Televerse in November when we look back at the show.
Created by Carol Black and Neal Marlens, The Wonder Years ran for six seasons on ABC from 1988 through 1993 and achieved a spot in the Nielsen Top Thirty for four of its six seasons. TV Guide named the show one of the 20 best of the 1980s and with only six episodes aired, The Wonder Years won an Emmy for best comedy series in 1988. In addition, at age 13, Fred Savage became the youngest actor ever nominated as Outstanding Lead Actor for a Comedy Series. The show was also awarded a Peabody Award in 1989, for achieving two seemingly contradictory effects: evoking a traditional family sitcom while pushing boundaries and using new modes of storytelling. In total, the series won 22 awards and received another 54 nominations for various awards.