Degrassi: The Next Generation | |
---|---|
Season 3 | |
No. of episodes | 22 |
Release | |
Original network | CTV |
Original release | 17 September 2003 5 April 2004 | –
Season chronology | |
The third season of Degrassi: The Next Generation, a Canadian serial teen drama television series, commenced airing in Canada on 17 September 2003 and concluded on 5 April 2004, consisting of twenty-two episodes. This season depicts the lives of a group of high school freshmen and sophomores as they deal with some of the challenges and issues teenagers face such as dysfunctional families, sex, homosexuality, homophobia, theft, self-harm, domestic violence, abortion, emancipation and relationships.
Every episode is named after a song from the 1980s.[1] Filming began on 26 May 2003, and ended in November 2003.[2]
The third season aired Wednesdays at 8:30 p.m. on CTV, a Canadian terrestrial television network, and premiered with a sixty-minute special, "Father Figure", which form the first two episodes of the season.[3] When the season returned to the schedules in January 2004 following a break over the Christmas period, it aired on Mondays at 8:30 p.m.[4][5] In the United States, it was broadcast on the Noggin cable channel during its programming block for teenagers, The N. The season was released on DVD as a three disc boxed set on 28 March 2006 by Alliance Atlantis Home Entertainment in Canada, and by FUNimation Entertainment in the US.[6] The show is also available on iTunes.
The season was watched by 669,000 viewers in Canada and became the most-watched domestic drama series, while in the US it averaged 250,000 viewers an episode. It won a total of five awards from the Directors Guild of Canada Awards, the Gemini Awards and the Young Artist Awards, and was described as "groundbreaking", "bold", and the show others in the same genre "should take a cue from", although that groundbreaking boldness caused two episodes of the season to be banned from US television screens for three years and when it was finally aired, it was rated "TV-14," even though more intense episodes still received Degrassi's usual "TV-PG" in the United States.
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