Degrassi: The Next Generation is a Canadian teen drama television series, set in the Degrassi fictional universe created by Linda Schuyler and Kit Hood in 1980. Degrassi: The Next Generation is the fourth fictional series in the Degrassi franchise, following The Kids of Degrassi Street, Degrassi Junior High, and Degrassi High.
Like its predecessors, Degrassi: The Next Generation follows a group of students attending Degrassi Community School who face challenges common to teen life, such as self image, peer pressure, child abuse, sexual identity, gang violence, self-injury, school shootings, teenage pregnancy and drug abuse. The series was created by Linda Schuyler and Yan Moore, is produced by Epitome Pictures in association with CTVglobemedia, and distributed by Alliance Atlantis. The current executive producers are Schuyler and her husband Stephen Stohn, and Sara Snow. Jody Colero is the music supervisor and selects all the music for the show, and Jim McGrath composes the music score. It is filmed at Epitome’s studios in Toronto, Ontario, rather than on the real De Grassi Street from which the franchise takes its name. The pilot episode, “Mother and Child Reunion”, premiered on 14 October 2001 on CTV, a Canadian terrestrial television network. The series has a large fan-base in the United States, where it is broadcast on the cable television network The N. The current season, season eight, premiered on 5 October 2008. As of 15 March 2009, 158 episodes have aired. A critical and popular success, Degrassi: The Next Generation is often the most watched domestic drama series in Canada, and the highest-rated show on The N. In 2004, one episode received just under one million Canadian viewers and over half a million U.S. viewers. The series has won numerous awards, including nine Gemini Awards, two Teen Choice Awards and five Directors Guild of Canada Awards. Degrassi: The Next Generation’s success has led to related miniseries and webisodes, and tie-in merchandise, including soundtrack CDs, an encyclopedic guidebook, graphic novels, and a podcast. As of March 2009, Degrassi has been renewed for an ninth season, filming begins in May 2009.
Music
Jim McGrath creates the musical score using an instrumental version of the theme music. He has worked with actors Jake Epstein & Melissa McIntyre when writing music for their characters Craig Manning and Ashley Kerwin to perform in the show’s bands Downtown Sasquatch, Paige Michalchuk and the Sexkittens and Hell Hath No Fury, and, with Jamie Johnston, is writing music for Johnston’s character Peter Stone’s band Stüdz.
Cast
Main roles
The opening season of Degrassi: The Next Generation featured thirteen actors in starring roles. Providing ties to the previous series in the Degrassi universe, Stefan Brogren was hired to play his old character Archie “Snake” Simpson, now working at the school as the media immersion teacher. Dan Woods reprised his role as Mr. Raditch, now promoted to school principal. Amanda Stepto also returned to the franchise to play her character Christine “Spike” Nelson in a recurring role. Miriam McDonald was hired to replace Ashlee Henricks (who had, in turn, replaced Samantha Morrison) as Spike’s daughter, Emma Nelson; she would remain the only character from Degrassi Junior High or Degrassi High to be re-cast with a different actor until the season three episode “Father Figure”. For the new generation of students, the producers chose eleven school-aged children from six hundred applicants in an attempt to provide characters to which the teenage target audience could relate. This was in contrast to other shows of the same period, such as Dawson’s Creek, which cast actors in their twenties as teenagers. Sarah Barrable-Tishauer acted as high-achiever yet lonely Liberty Van Zandt. Daniel Clark played bad-boy Sean Cameron. Lauren Collins acted as cool cheerleader Paige Michalchuk. Ryan Cooley acted as class clown James Tiberius “J.T.” Yorke. Jake Goldsbie portrayed Toby Isaacs, a computer geek. Aubrey Graham portrayed rich and athletic Jimmy Brooks. Shane Kippel played Gavin “Spinner” Mason, the school bully with a heart of gold. Miriam McDonald portrayed environmentalist Emma Nelson. Melissa McIntyre played Ashley Kerwin, the perfect girl who attracts the popular boys, and the other girls are jealous of. Cassie Steele played Emma’s sidekick, the sweet and innocent Manuela “Manny” Santos. Christina Schmidt portrayed chubby and insecure Terri McGreggor. In season two, former Degrassi actor Pat Mastroianni returned to the franchise as Joey Jeremiah, followed by the return of Joey’s former on-screen girlfriend, Caitlin Ryan (played by Stacie Mistysyn), in the third season. There have been a number departures from the series, and season six depicted the first death of one of the show’s main characters, when J.T. Yorke was stabbed and killed. Daniel Clark’s character Sean Cameron has been written out of the show twice. He left the series during the fourth season in the wake of the shooting death of Rick Murray, and returned for the sixth season. He left the series once again, but made another reappearance for one episode in season seven. The family of Joey Jeremiah was written out of the series at the end of season five, when Joey and his daughter Angie, moved to Calgary, Alberta, and his stepson Craig Manning left Degrassi to pursue his musical dreams. Craig has made guest appearances three times since then, reappearing in a two-part episode in season six and an episode in season seven. He will also make an appearance in the upcoming eighth season. Caitlin Ryan left to continue her career in Los Angeles, California, though she returned in one episode of season seven. Some of the cast of season eight make an appearance at the eTalk Festival Party during the Toronto International Film Festival
At the end of season six several main characters graduated from Degrassi Community School, and either left the series or went on to university. As a result, six new characters were introduced in season seven in a storyline where nearby rival high school Lakehurst merged with Degrassi due to a fire. Season eight saw major changes when many of the existing cast members, including Lauren Collins (Paige Michalchuk), Stacey Farber (Ellie Nash), Aubrey Graham, Amanda Stepto, Shenae Grimes (Darcy Edwards), Mike Lobel (Jay Hogart), Adamo Ruggiero (Marco Del Rossi), Melissa DiMarco (Ms. Hatzilakos), and Mazin Elsadig (Damian Hayes), either moved to recurring status or left the series entirely. The exodus of several major cast members was reportedly an executive decision that left the actors and producers on bad terms, with Graham stating “[the producers] did us foul.” Thirteen actors were added to the main cast to replace them; Samantha Munro, Jajube Mandiel, Aislinn Paul, Raymond Ablack, Natty Zavitz, and Scott Paterson all held recurring roles in previous seasons, while Evan Williams, Judy Jiao, AJ Saudin, Sam Earle, Melinda Shankar, Jordan Hudyma, and Argiris Karras are new to the series.
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