Who developed the 2021 version of The Wonder Years?

Saladin K. Patterson developed the 2021 version of The Wonder Years.

Patterson’s series reimagines the premise through Dean Williams, a 12-year-old Black boy growing up in a middle-class family in Montgomery, Alabama, during the late 1960s. Like the 1988 original, it uses an adult narrator looking back on adolescence, but the new show places family, race, community, and the civil-rights-era South at the center of its coming-of-age story.

The distinction between “developed by” and “executive producer” matters here. Lee Daniels, Marc Velez, and Fred Savage were involved as executive producers, while Savage also starred in and directed the original series. Their association with the reboot can make the credits easy to conflate, but Patterson is the person credited with developing the 2021 program.

The series premiered on ABC on September 22, 2021, and ultimately ran for two seasons and 32 episodes. Don Cheadle provided the voice of adult Dean, paralleling Daniel Stern’s narration of the original show. ABC canceled the revival in September 2023.