I don't recall exactly how or when I happened upon Degrassi Junior High. I do, however, recall what I found interesting about the show and what I liked about it, it felt real rather like some of the films of John Cassavetes and François Truffaut's 400 Blows. Later I learned that Degrassi Junior High was the heir of the Kids of Degrassi Street (CBC, 1979-1986). I learned that the franchise came out of Playing With Time Incorporated, a production company established by Linda Schuyler, a former teacher, and Kit Hood, a former editor, in Toronto. I learned where the realism of Degrassi with its age appropriate casting, its emphasis on school time, and its documentary like mise-en scene, a mise-en-scene that was so real that it was filmed on the upper floors of a real school, came from. I learned that it came not only out of the intentions of Schuyler, Hood, and main writer Yan Moore, but also from the Playing With Time Repertory Company, which was also established by Schuyler and Hood, and which was made up of the cast of, at its zenith, around 65 young people, who applied to become members of the company and had to do auditions before they could become members of Repco, as insiders called the Playing With Time Repertory Company. I learned that the cast of Degrassi got together during the reading of scripts and during those readings cast members made suggestions to Schuyler, Hood, Moore, and the other writers, as to how the characters in the show would act and how they would speak. I learned that the adults behind the show, who were already committed to realism, took the input of the Repco seriously, something that made the show seem real despite exaggerations for dramatic and comedic effect, to this thirtysomething who had experienced many of the things portrayed in a show during his junior and senior high school years. I learned that Degrassi's mission was, as was that of the early BBC, to entertain and critically, to educate. I thought Degrassi did both.
Now that I am even older it seems to me that Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High were among the first television shows, to realistically explore the lives of junior and senior high schoolers. In retrospect, Degrassi seems like the first in a line of more realist television shows that would lead to the American television show The Wonder Years (ABC, 1998-1993), whose focus was as much if not more on the outside of school life of three friends, Kevin, Winnie, and Paul, and on Kevin's family life, Aaron Spelling's Beverly Hills, 90210 (Fox, 1990-2000), initially, apparently, an American attempt to do Degrassi High, the American television show My So Called Life (ABC, 1994-1995), the American television show Freaks and Geeks (NBC, 1999-2000), the brilliant American television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer (WB, 1997-2001, UPN, 2001-2003), where the metaphors of the horrors and terrors of high school--not only those of the id--were grafted onto monsters, the British show Outnumbered (BBC, 2007-2014), which was filmed in a real house in Wandsworth and which allowed its three kids to improv within the boundaries set by the script, and the British television show Skins (E4, 2007-2013), the Georgie arc in the Canadian show Heartland (CBC, 2007-), aspects of the Canadian show Dark Oracle (YTV, 2004-2006), and even the American television show thirtysomething (ABC, 1987-1991), a realist look at the lives of several American thirtysomethings in Philadelphia. For this reason alone Degrassi is historically significant and deserves the attention of cultural historians, social scientists, and media scholars.
The Degrassi franchise, as I noted earlier, did not end with School's Out in 1992. In 2001 Degrassi was resurrected as Degrassi: The Next Generation, just as Star Trek had been raised from the dead with Star Trek: The Next Generation (syndicated, 1987-1994). This new iteration of Degrassi, after the two parter "Mother and Child Reunion", which introduced us to Emma, the daughter "Spike" gave birth to in Degrassi Junior High, even reused, at least in the first season, many of the same elements (for example, the school election, the school dance, alcohol abuse) from the early episodes of Degrassi Junior High.
There are other similarities between Degrassi Classic and Degrassi: TNG as well including an ensemble cast, the use of age appropriate actors, character arcs, the focus on school time, the focus on the seemingly apocalyptic trials, tribulations, and travails of the junior high school and senior high school student, a musical score that still does variations on the theme song, and a cast that reflected the multiculturalism and diversity of Canada in the wake of changes in Canadian immigration policy and the sources of immigration to Canada in 1947, 1952, 1962, 1967, and 1976. Similarities aside, there are also differences between Degrassi Classic and Degrassi: The Next Generation. Instead of filming in a real school, as did Degrassi Classic, Degrassi: The Next Generation was filmed at the studios of Epitome Pictures in Toronto, which was founded by Schuyler and Steven Sohn in 1992, which was renamed DHX Pictures Toronto in 2014 (a division of DHX Media) and which is now part of WildBrain, a Canadian entertainment conglomerate specialising in children's television programming. There was no longer a repertory company that the cast was part of. The actors in TNG were professional actors unlike the amateurs of the Playing With Time Repertory Company. The stars of TNG got their names and faces above the title while the ensemble that was Degrassi Classic got their names in the end credits. Though the actors in TNG are age appropriate, some of them looked to me more like the professional models cum actors of American teen shows with their twentysomethings playing teen somethings. TNG was on the commercial Canadian network CTV while Classic was on the Canadian public television network, CBC.
Though co-creator Linda Schuyler downplayed the differences between Degrassi Classic and Degrassi The Next Generation at a TNG panel at the 2021 ATX festival, the differences between the two are, at least to me and to others who have written critically about the differences between Degrassi Classic and TNG, significant. While viewers still, if fan comments on social media are a guide, identified with members of the TNG cast, there is a qualitative difference between identifying with cast members who are amateurs and more like the viewers than with a cast of professional actors, even if being a professional actor and celebrity in Canada is different than being a professional actor and celebrity in the United States, who are a class apart. Speaking of stars, we shouldn't forget that TNG produced a megacelebrity, rapper Aubrey Graham who now goes by the name of Drake, and middling television celebrities like Shenea Grimes, who went on to star in the reboot of the American teen show 90210 (CW, 2008-2013), Nina Dobrev, who starred in the American teen horror show Vampire Diaries (CW, 2009-2017), and Stacey Farber, who went on to star in the Canadian show 18 to Life (CBC, 2010-2011, CW, 2010), none of whom appeared on the ATX TNG 20th anniversary reunion panel. Classic, on the other hand, did not produce megastars or even middling celebrities because, to some extent, the original kids of Degrassi--"Snake", "Wheels", "Spike", Stephanie, Lucy, Michelle, Caitlin, Joey, Heather, Erica, Arthur, Yick, Liz, Voula, LD--were too real and were, as a result, too typecast as actors. Subsequent acting gigs offered many of those who remained actors after Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High were for characters which were much like those they played in Degrassi Classic.
For an interesting collection of essays on Degrassi see Michele Byers (ed.), Growing Up Degrassi: Television, Identity, and Youth Cultures, Toronto: Sumach Press, 2005)
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