Nostalgia Why do you want to go back to being a teenager watching TV?
The classics of the 80s and 90s are back
Dean is 12 years old, typical preteen problems, and has a voice over to remind us of his thoughts.
Come on, anyone's life except for the commentator.
Surely if you were a child in the 90s, the premise sounds like a different name to you: Kevin.
Yes, that goofy, cuddly boy from Those Wonderful Years.
Well, now he has become Dean again,
with his life in Montgomery (Alabama) in the late 60s and as the son of a black family
. Some considerable changes for the return, which Disney + will execute on December 22, of one of the most remembered series. “It is very intimidating to reimagine something so good, but we saw that there was another story that could be told under the umbrella of
Those Wonderful Years
with a Black Family. They wanted to achieve the same American dream, but they had fewer options due to racial segregation ", details Saladin K. Patterson, executive producer of the new series.
He knows well the terrain on which this new version that begins with the assassination of Martin Luther King is based. He grew up in the same place as Dean and many of the racial problems, past the 60's, persisted during his childhood and still continue. “
It is true that the things that Americans were about race, gender, or economic inequalities in the late 1960s are still the same today
. This was a good time to focus on society's problems by showing them how they dealt with them and how this family copes with all obstacles together. So we can see how successful that was in many families because their members are still fighting for these causes.
Hence largely the choice of Alabama as the setting. “The original never said where it was and it showed some generic suburbs. But
separating a black family from its neighborhoods in a bubble is impossible.
So it is better to take them to Alabama, the cradle of the fight for racial rights, and let people see how we lived.
The bet is not easy either and the criticism always rages with some fans little given to change. A fact quite repeated nowadays with the racialization of characters or the changes of sexual condition due to the culture wars. “I insist that it is neither a
remake
nor a
reboot
, it doesn't make sense to make a black Kevin. That could be criticized, but we took the idea and built a new story, new characters, a new family and even a new location.
It's like Black Panther in Marvel,
"says Patterson.
What
Those Wonderful
Years
does keep
is the time frame: the late 1960s. “There are already a lot of shows that focus on black families in the 80s and 90s like
The Time for Bill Cosby
or
The Prince of Bel-Air
, but there aren't that many that focus exclusively on black families in the 1960s and it's worth seeing. " And why not bring it up to date? "The premise of this series is to go back 20 years, that would take us to 2001.
Of course, in this time society has evolved and advanced but I don't know if we have enough perspective to tell it
or if the changes have been so great", Patterson finishes.
In addition, the end of the 1960s for the African-American population of the United States
is a time of protest agitation increased by the assassination of Martin Luther King
. “And we have the Vietnam War in the background and what that meant for many black families. These families had to send their youngest children to fight for a country that excluded them and accepted them from us in their day-to-day lives, ”says the creator.
And, in the middle of all that climate, manage to deal with the problems of a life as a teenager, as a mother or as the father of a family. "The point of view of the sister is very interesting since adolescence because
at that time it was like they were trying to hide everything that was happening around them to protect them
when they were actually living it and were beginning to be aware. And that of the mother is difficult because it was already difficult to be a woman, imagine what it was like being black ", explains Patterson in conversation through Zoom.
To articulate this whole world around Dean and under the brand Those Wonderful Years,
the series has had an old acquaintance from the original version: Fred Savage.
Whoever became the youngest person to win an Emmy for best actor in the late 1980s has moved to the other side of the camera as executive producer Patterson.
«Having Fred is a blessing, it solves any problem with this universe for you.
It's fantastic, ”says his partner.
Now, the final question: how to drag the young audience, the main target of the original series, to the story of a child of the late 60s?
«Well, I was very surprised with the reception in networks.
Many people have told me that this is one of the few series that you can watch as a family, "
concludes Patterson.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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