ABC Rebooting ‘The Wonder Years’ With A Black Family

ABC is rebooting The Wonder Years, but with a black family. The original coming-of-age “dramedy” starred Fred Savage, premiered in 1988 and ran for six seasons.

The Wonder Years followed Savage’s character as a middle-class suburban teenager growing up during the late 1960s and early ‘70s. 

The rebooted show will take place in the same time period, but it will focus on a black family who lives in Montgomery, Alabama.

Empire co-creator Lee Daniels will be the executive producer of the show, Saladin K. Patterson is the showrunner and the original series co-creator Neal Marlens is working as a consultant. Savage is also on the team working as a director and executive producer.

The official description for the reboot reads, “How a black middle-class family in Montgomery, Alabama in the turbulent late 1960’s, the same era as the original series, made sure it was The Wonder Years for them too.”

In prior years, Savage has slammed the idea of rebooting The Wonder Years. However, the question was usually asked in regards to continuing the story with the original cast.

“My answer will remain the same — so I won’t get tired of people asking if everyone else doesn’t get tired of me saying, ‘No, it’s not going to happen,’” Savage told Vanity Fair. “You know, I’ve always said that The Wonder Years, it’s not just the name of the show — it’s a time in your life, a very special, finite time in your life. And the way the show was written, it’s about looking back with some longing. I think we all look back at that time in our lives and long for it and idealize it. One of the reasons it takes on this kind of mythic, almost haunting quality in our lives is because it’s something you can’t go back and can’t revisit. It only exists in our memories, in our shared experiences with people who went through it with us. That’s really what the show was all about. And I think that the idea of revisiting the show mirrors that. And I like that… I love all the reboots and revisitations and reimaginings of all these [other] shows, but I don’t think it works, conceptually, for The Wonder Years.”

The reboot of the ABC series makes sense and is very timely as the globe is taking more interest in topics concerning race relations and racial injustice. Fans will learn in the reboot how a different family lived those same “wonder years” in a different part of the country.