The airwaves have been chocked with teen dramas probably since advertisers realized there was big money to be made appealing to the 15 –25 year age group. They started off with films in the mid to late seventies and then moved on the television screens in the early eighties and haven't let us alone since.
I'm sure most of us have heard of at least Beverly Hills 90210, Degrassi Junior High, (and its latest incarnation, the kids of kids of Degrassi or as they like to call it Degrassi: Next Generation) and My So Called Life which featured Claire Danes. Of those three the original Degrassi series was the least slick and most believable, and Claire Danes was her usual luminescent self in salvaging what could have been teen melodrama, and 90210 was – well the less said about that one the better.
But after the fall of 90210 and before the resurrection of Degrassi there appeared a half hour show that may have snuck under your radar, even if you lived in its country of origin. Our Hero was produced in Canada by a small independent production company along with the ubiquitous assistance of the Mother corporation, better known as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (C.B.C.).
Our Hero was broadcast for three seasons starting in 2000 and followed seventeen year old Kale Stiglie (Cara Pifko) as she came to grips with life, the universe, and everything. It sounds like your typical teen-angst drama, an oh-so-embarrassing moments type show, but it was saved by a number of details so many of these shows seem to overlook: originality, great scripts, a firm grip on reality, and an understanding of what is and isn't funny and what is and isn't emotion.
The great script and originality pretty much fall into the same camp in Our Hero as it revolves around Kale's attempts to find her way in the world and her recording of it in that precursor to blogs known as a 'zine. 'Zines were and maybe still are a means of recording your life in the form of a newspaper. They were very deliberately made along the lines of a cut and paste ransom note to emphasize their true homemade nature. They were heavily reliant on paste, scissors, originality, and photocopying.
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