<P> The show earned a spot in the Nielsen Top 30 during its first four seasons . TV Guide named it one of the 20 best shows of the 1980s . After six episodes, The Wonder Years won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1988 . In addition, at age 13, Fred Savage became the youngest actor ever nominated as Outstanding Lead Actor for a Comedy Series . The show was also awarded a Peabody Award in 1989 for "pushing the boundaries of the sitcom format and using new modes of storytelling". In total, the series won 22 awards and was nominated for 54 more . In 1997, "My Father's Office" was ranked #29 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time, and in the 2009 revised list the pilot episode was ranked #43 . In 2016, Rolling Stone ranked The Wonder Years #63 on its list of 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time . In 2017, James Charisma of Paste ranked the show's opening sequence #14 on a list of The 75 Best TV Title Sequences of All Time . As of recent years many critics and fans consider The Wonder Years to be a classic and that it has had tremendous impact on the industry over the years and has inspired many other shows and how they are structured . </P> <P> The series was conceived by writers Neal Marlens and Carol Black . They set out to create a family show that would appeal to the baby - boomer generation by setting the series in the late' 60s, a time of radical change in America's history . They also wanted the series to tie this setting in to the life of a normal boy growing up during the period . After writing the script for the pilot episode, Marlens and Black began pitching the series to television networks . None of them were interested, except for ABC, with whom Marlens and Black reached an agreement . </P> <P> Marlens had originally wanted the setting to be his native Huntington, Long Island, where he grew up . Elements were also taken from Black's childhood from the White Oak section of Silver Spring, Maryland . ABC, however, insisted that the location remain nonspecific (the colloquial "Anytown, USA"). </P> <P> When they started writing the series, Marlens and Black took a script for a future film that they had been toying with, which featured an off - screen narrator . Black explained, "We liked the concept that you could play with what people think and what they're saying, or how they would like to see themselves as opposed to how the audience is seeing them ." They based the show, in part, on their own childhood growing up in the suburbs . Black recalled that "we naturally (took) elements of our experience and (threw) them into the pot . The basic setup, the neighborhood, the era--that's the time and place where we grew up ." </P>

Where was the wonder years supposed to take place