“I don’t wanna wait / for our lives to be over…” was the cue on a Sunday morning to run, not walk, to the front room to collapse onto the sofa and tune in to T4. It was, of course, the iconic theme song – sung by Paula Cole – to Dawson’s Creek, and the week’s installment of the addictively angsty teen drama was just about to begin.
I was in the sixth form in high school – in central Norwich; sadly not a charming creek in the fictional Capeside, Massachusetts – when the series began in 1998 and the show’s popularity swept through the school quicker than a limited edition Impulse spray. It became a counterpart to my friends and my own coming-of-age experiences, the main characters accompanying us through to adulthood and into the real world, reflecting shared experiences. Although, arguably, it’s unlikely that cinephile Dawson Leery spent his Sundays at university hungover, drinking leftover Smirnoff Ice and eating beans on toast while having a cathartic cry to his favourite TV drama. Or maybe we were more alike than I knew?
