THE WONDER YEARS: THE COMPLETE SERIES SET
The Wonder Years ran for six seasons, from 1988 to 1993, and featured an adult narrator looking back on childhood with both nostalgic affection and a wizened perspective. It wasn’t a new idea for a sitcom – one of TV’s very first, Mama, pulled the same trick in 1949. But in The Wonder Years, which had narrator Daniel Stern portraying the adult Kevin Arnold looking back on his own junior high and high school years in the Sixties and Seventies, series creators Carol Black and Neal Marlens gave us one of TV’s all-time best comedies. Fred Savage stars as young Kevin, with Danica McKellar and Josh Saviano as unforgettable childhood friends Winnie and Paul, respectively. This complete set, which looked back at a previous generation, took another full generation to arrive on DVD, but it’s well worth the wait. – David Bianculli