Peter Engel, who executive produced Saved by the Bell and a host of other teen sitcoms for NBC, has died.
Engel died Tuesday morning at his home in Santa Monica. He was 88.
The show that became Saved by the Bell began life as Good Morning, Miss Bliss on Disney Channel. The series at the time focused on Hayley Mills, who played the title character, and her students at an Indianapolis junior high school. That show lasted only one season, but after a retooling (and change in setting to Southern California), the NBC-produced show was relaunched as Saved by the Bell and became both a staple of NBC’s Saturday lineup from 1989-93 and a touchstone show for Gen X and millennial viewers.
The show helped launch the careers of its young cast — Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Tiffani Thiessen, Mario Lopez, Elizabeth Berkley, Dustin Diamond and Lark Voorhies — and spawned a primetime spinoff subtitled The College Years as well as Saved by the Bell: The New Class, which ran from 1993-2000 as a Saturday morning show. Engel was also an executive producer of Peacock’s Saved by the Bell update, which ran for two seasons in 2020 and ’21.
Engel’s eponymous production company went on to supply NBC with a host of other teen-oriented sitcoms, including California Dreams, USA High, Malibu, CA, City Guys and Hang Time, among others. Engel wrote dozens of episodes of those shows.
More to come.
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