James at 15 (1977)

Original title

James at 16

Directed by

Ernest Pintoff, Peter Levin, Marc Daniels, Joseph Hardy

Genre

drama television series

Country

United States

Length

1 season, 21 episodes

Rating

6.8 of 10 from 6 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A teenage boy navigates the challenges of adolescence in the late 1970s. The show follows his everyday experiences, dreams, and personal struggles as he grows up.

melancholicintrospectivewistfulsincerelow-keyearnestreflectivesoftly dramatic

What happens

James at 15 (later James at 16) is an American drama series that aired on NBC during the 1977–78 season. The series was preceded by the 1977 TV movie James at 15, which aired on Monday September 5, 1977 and was intended as a television pilot for the series. Both were written by Dan Wakefield, a journalist and fiction writer whose novel Going All the Way, a tale of coming of age in the 1950s, had led to his being contacted by David Sontag of Twentieth Century Fox. Sontag, the senior vice-president of creative affairs at Fox, had had a lunch meeting in New York City with Paul Klein, the head of programming at NBC. Klein said he needed a series for Sunday night. On the spot, Sontag pitched the idea for a coming-of-age series seen through the eyes of a teenage boy, including his dreams, fantasies, and hopes. Klein loved the idea and asked Sontag who would write it, with Sontag's suggesting Dan Wakefield. Despite this unsourced account of the "creation" of the series, Sontag created no characters, no plotlines, and no settings. The on-screen credit for the series reads "Created by Dan Wakefield," as it was Wakefield who worked out the specifics from Sontag's general conceptual outline. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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