| Generation X-ers retain fond memories of coming home from school, casting aside their Trapper Keepers, and cozying up to moralistic tales of teen pregnancy, suicide, and drug abuse on ABC`s Emmy Award-winning AFTER SCHOOL SPECIALS. Airing on weekday afternoons from 1974-1989, the series` issue-oriented storylines were adapted from young-adult novels and starred some of the most popular teen actors of its day: Rob Lowe, Dana Plato, Nancy McKeon, Eve Plumb, and the queen of 1970s television melodrama, Kristy McNichol. This collection offers a quartet of early specials dating from 1976-1977: Francesca Baby, about a teenager struggling to deal with her alcoholic mother; Beat The Turtle Drum, starring Melissa Sue Anderson as a sensitive girl coming to terms with the accidental death of her younger sister; Trouble River, in which a tough-minded adolescent and his even tougher grandmother brave a wild river; and The Pinballs co-starring McNichol as a pre-teen outcast forced to live with an elderly foster couple. |
