Movies - Dawson's Creek

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	Movies - Dawson's Creek

Dawson's Creek was a popular American serial television drama aimed at teenagers, which aired in hour-long episodes from 1998 to 2003. The show is semi-autobiographical, being based on the small-town childhood of its creator Kevin Williamson, who also wrote the slasher film Scream. The lead character, Dawson Leery, shares Williamson's interests and background. Filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina, the show was set in a small Massachusetts seaside town and focused on four friends who began their sophomore year of high school as the show began. The program, part of a craze for teen-themed movies and television shows in America in the late 1990s, made stars of its leads and was a defining show for its network, The WB. Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times declared in 2005 that "The WB is turning out to be the television equivalent of the United Nations" and that "Dawson's Creek was its Dag Hammarskjöld: It was the first series bold enough to pick up the mantle of Beverly Hills, 90210 and an inspiration for many variations on the teenage angst theme, including The O.C. on Fox".

The show generated an unusual amount of publicity before its debut, with several television critics and watchdog groups expressing concerns about its anticipated "racy" plots and dialogue; the controversy even drove one of the original production companies away from the project but numerous critics praised it for its realism and intelligent dialogue that included allusions to American television icons such as The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. By the end of its run, the show, its crew, and its young cast had been nominated for over a dozen awards, winning four of them.

The series was known for the verbosity and complexity of the dialogue between its teen characters. The lead character Dawson often demonstrated vocabulary and cultural awareness to outdo the average graduate student, yet that was combined with an emotional immaturity and self-absorption reflecting actual teenagers. This precociousness has been a staple of a number of teen shows since, notably including Gilmore Girls and The O.C..

The lead production company was Columbia Tri-Star Television. Reruns of the show are currently seen in the US in syndication on TBS and soon to be on The N.

Origins and reaction

Kevin Williamson, a native of the small coastal town of Oriental, North Carolina, was approached in 1995 by producer Paul Stupin to write a pilot for a television series. Stupin, who as a Fox Network executive had brought Beverly Hills, 90210 to the air, sought out Williamson after having read his script for the slasher film Scream, a knowing, witty work about high school students. Initially offered to Fox, the network turned it down but The WB was eager, looking for programming to fill its new Tuesday night lineup. Williamson said "I pitched it as Some Kind of Wonderful
, meets Pump Up the Volume
, meets James at 15, meets My So-Called Life, meets Little House on the Prairie". The show's lead character, Dawson Leery, was Williamson's doppelgänger: obsessed with movies and platonically sharing his bed with the girl down the creek.

This show was co-produced through Procter & Gamble Productions, the maker of daytime soaps such as As the World Turns and Guiding Light, sold its interest in the show three months before the premiere when the company's hometown newspapers, The Cincinnati Enquirer and The Cincinnati Post, printed stories about the racy dialogue and risque plot lines. The Enquirer's television columnist, John Kieswetter, would write "As much as I want to love the show—the cool kids, charming New England setting, and stunning cinematography—I can't get past the consuming preoccupation with sex, sex, sex". How preoccupied was it? Syndicated columnist John Leo, who said the show should be called "When Parents Cringe", wrote "The first episode contains a good deal of chatter about breasts, genitalia, masturbation, and penis size. Then the title and credits come on and the story begins". The Washington Post's Tom Shales said creator Kevin Williamson was "the most overrated wunderkind in Hollywood" and "what he's brilliant at is pandering." Williamson denied this was his intention, telling television critics before the show's premiere that "I never set out to make something provocative and racy".

The Parents Television Council, the group founded by L. Brent Bozell to monitor television for sex, violence, and coarse language, proclaimed the show the single worst program of the 1997-1998 season, a title the Council would also award it for the 1998-1999 season. The Council would proclaim it the fourth worst show in 2000-2001. However, on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, the National Organization for Women offered an endorsement, saying it was one of the least sexually exploitive shows on the air. - - But for every scathing review, there was a glowing one. Variety wrote it was "an addictive drama with considerable heart," "the teenage equivalent of a Woody Allen movie—a kind of 'Deconstructing Puberty.'" The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said it was "a teen's dream." The Dayton Daily News listed Capeside as a television town they'd most like to live in. The Seattle Times declared it the best show of the 1997-1998 season.

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Movies - Dawson's Creek

Origins and reaction

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