ABC's reboot of The Wonder Years attempts to recapture the golden age of nostalgia with a trip back to the 1960s, but the series is missing out by not updating its setting. With Fred Savage, the star of the original series, now serving as executive producer alongside The United States vs. Billie Holiday director Lee Daniels, the new series aims to update the original. The reboot leaves the old cast behind, now following a Black family in Montgomery, Alabama. It's a welcome new take on the show, but the Wonder Years reboot could have told a much more poignant story with a new setting.
If the decision had been made to place the characters of the Wonder Years reboot in the 2000s, the show could have told a story that was more personal and relevant to a modern audience. The '60s were a singular time with major cultural shifts and plenty of touchstones ripe for reminiscence, but it's also a decade that belongs to the previous generation. A more modern setting would have allowed for the exploration of new themes, giving the reboot much greater cultural resonance.
Despite the decade's continuous presence in the public consciousness, for much of the modern TV audience, the 1960s feel like the distant past. The civil rights movement makes for a compelling backdrop, but for many viewers, it will feel more like something out of a textbook rather than their memories. Sentimentality is at the core of a story like the Wonder Years reboot, but that sentiment feels much stronger when rooted in an actual common experience. For a great deal of the audience, the '60s are no longer a part of childhood, they're a part of history.
The 1960s have served as a fantastic setting for countless movies and TV shows, but the shifting political sands of the 2000s offer compelling new territory to explore. From the terrorist attacks of September 11th to the election of the United States' first Black president, the decade was home to a wide range of pivotal moments in history. For millions of people, these are formative events, massive changes that shaped their childhood. Setting a coming-of-age story like The Wonder Years during this period would have allowed it to explore these moments in time through a new lens and helped it stand out from the crowd of 2021 TV show reboots.
Ultimately, The Wonder Years is a show designed to evoke the particular warmth of nostalgia. Airing in the late 1980s, the original sought to relive events that had taken place 20 years prior. By holding on to the '60s setting, the reboot instead harkens back to memories from over 50 years ago. Despite its many charms, without updating the setting, The Wonder Years is stuck in the nostalgia of the previous generation.