Growing up, watching Fred Savage’s Kevin Arnold and Danica McKeller’s Winnie Cooper go through early adolescence together was an important part of my childhood. The Wonder Years was one of the first comedy series since MASH and Good Times to successfully blend comedy and drama in a way that really made audiences feel something. Now, Savage is back, but as an executive producer along with Lee Daniels and Saladin Patterson, for a reboot of the series that focuses on a different family and a different point of view.
In the new take on Wonder Years, we’ll still be watching a family during the 1960s, but instead of the Arnolds, we’ll meet the Williams family, as portrayed by Dulé Hill, Laura Kariuki, and Saycon Sengbloh. They will also bring back the important role of the narrator in the series. While the original series featured Daniel Stern as the voice of the grown-up Kevin Arnold, the new series features Don Cheadle as the grown-up voice of Dean Wilson.
There are going to be a lot of complaints about this series being just a race-swapped reboot for ratings purposes, but we don’t think that’s the case. The experience of a white family and a black family in 1960s America were so vastly different that it doesn’t just feel like a cash grab by the network. It feels like there is a whole story to tell that is completely unique and worth seeing. Also, we’ll pretty much watch anything with Dulé Hill in it.