Boston Public
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Boston Public was a popular television show created by David E. Kelley and broadcast on the Fox Network from October 23, 2000 through 2004. It centers around Winslow High School, a fictional public high school located in Boston, Massachusetts. The show is named for the real public school district in which it takes place.
The show, which featured a large ensemble cast, focused on the work and private lives of the various teachers, students and administrators at the school and their various personalities. The show, which preceded the Ally McBeal timeslot on Monday nights, received some initial popularity and critical acclaim. After ratings declined, Fox moved it to the Friday night death slot for the 2003 season. Viewership plummeted accordingly, and the show was cancelled after a truncated fourth season.
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Social Soapbox
The series often served as a soapbox about various topical issues such as affirmative action, teenage pregnancy, school violence and bullying, obesity, racism, gay-bashing, prayer in school, and state funding for public education. While the show's writers clearly had a center-left bias, it used the faculty and student characters to present all sides of a particular issue.
Criticism
The series won critical praise as a television drama that showed what high school was like for the faculty and staff. This was one of the first televsion shows in America to focus on the lives high school faculty and staff, where as most film and televsion shows about high school tended to focus on the students. However, the series was plagued with constant and unexplained casting changes, pressure to market to a younger audience by focusing more on the lives of the students and situations that were hard for some audience members to accept, even as a fictional drama.
Cast
- Steven Harper (Chi McBride)
- Scott Guber (Anthony Heald)
- Lauren Davis (Jessalyn Gilsig)
- Harry Senate (Nicky Katt)
- Marla Hendricks (Loretta Devine)
- Marilyn Sudor (Sharon Leal)
- Ronnie Cooke (Jeri Ryan)
- Danny Hanson (Michael Rapaport)
- Harvey Lipschultz (Fyvush Finkel)
- Louisa Fenn (Rashida Jones)
- Kevin Riley (Thomas McCarthy)
- Milton Buttle (Joey Slotnick)
- Carmen Torres (Natalia Baron)
- Zack Fisher (Jon Abrahams)
- Colin Flynn (Joseph McIntyre)
- Marcy Kendall (Cara DeLizia)
- Brooke Harper (China Jesusita Shavers)