A Christmas Story' of Jean Shepherd, the man behind a holiday classic - The Verge
Jean Shepherd at work.

How about some controversy? ABC TV is bringing back “The Wonder Years” with an all black cast. Fine so far. On the surface this looks at least like just another example of TV and moviedoms lack of originality. Rather than create anything new, Hollywood keeps rebooting ideas from the past.

But the problem is The Wonder Years, which ran on ABC TV between 1988 and 1993 was not exactly an original idea in the first place. In fact it was a blatant ripoff of “A Christmas Story,” which was written and narrated by cult figure/humorist Jean Shepherd, based on his novel “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash.” Shepherd not only wrote the individual tales that he stitched together in book form, he actually told these stories live on late night radio on WOR in New York in the 1960s.

The Wonder Years “creators” hired actor Daniel Stern to narrate the TV series, and Stern delivered a complete carbon copy of Shepherd’s storytelling style. This is something that hardly ever got mentioned by TV critics, but it’s a fact. I guess being a cult figure, Shepherd did not have enough public recognition for anybody to notice or care about this wholesale hijacking of Shepherd’s life work.

This time around they hired Don Cheadle to do the narration, which is good, I guess. I like Cheadle. At least he won’t try to imitate the Shepherd style. I don’t expect ABC or those running the reboot to give Shepherd any sort of posthumous credit for being the inspiration for The Wonder Years at this late date. That’s life, ain’ t it? Kind of like one of old Shep’s own shaggy dog stories.

Excelsior, you Fathead!