If you grew up in Canada during the 1980s and 90s, you remember a channel called YTV. Earlier on Gone But Not Forgotten, we dug into a staple of YTV, You Can’t Do That on Television, which became our biggest episode ever. This week, we look at another show that was played to death on YTV, the superhero teen tv comedy My Secret Identity, starring a young Jerry O’Connell. The show ran for three seasons (1988-1991) and has a strong cult following to this day.
In this special episode of Gone But Not Forgotten, we look back at the show with a little help from special guests Brian Levant and Fred Fox Jr, who created the show. While the budget was impossibly low, Canadian kids loved this stet-natured comedy. It helped make Jerry O’Connell a star, as eventually, it began airing in the U.S too in syndication. O’Connell starred as a teen named Andrew Clements, who gets hit by a ray in a school lab accident and develops superpowers that enable him to fly with the help of a couple of aerosol cans. He’s helped by his mentor, Dr. Benjamin Jeffcoate, played by Canadian character actor Derek McGrath, who also has a crush on Andrew’s mom, played by Wanda Cannon.
Eventually, the show ended, but O’Connell went on to significant stardom in the U.S. In this episode, we take an affectionate look back at a show that – while a bit cheesy – is a fun piece of late eighties nostalgia.