Freaks and Geeks marks 10 Years

Judd Apatow discusses Anchorman 2.

Interesting, interesting… and so, what have those discussions yielded, Mr. Apatow? “When we made Anchorman, Adam and Will had a lot of ideas about what the sequel would be – they’d always laugh about where they’d take the characters.”

And where that is, as it happens, is in a particularly intriguing direction. “The great thing is, Will can be any age and play that character. Those anchormen sometimes have their jobs until they’re 75 years old. So we would always laugh that this movie could work if everybody’s really elderly.”

Ron as an OAP? Brian Fantana adding a catheter to the winning team of The Octagon, James Westfall and Dr. Kenneth Noisewater? Brick Tamland with a severe case of arthritic hip? This could take us into Grumpy Old Anchormen territory… but while we’d love to see the Channel 4 News Team back on the big screen in any incarnation, we’d rather not wait another four decades for it to happen.

Fear not, though – Apatow feels your pain. “I hope we do it before that,” he laughed. Amen to that, sir. Amen to that.

Newsday remembers Freaks and Geeks. This year is the 10th anniversary of the debut of the cult classic series that only lasted for one season.

With the 2009 TV season unofficially kicking off tonight, we thought we'd take a look back 10 years ago and recall one of the most influential shows that debuted that fall.

We speak of "Freaks and Geeks," the drama set at a high school in 1980 created by Judd Apatow. NBC gave the show the death slot of Saturday (!) at 8 p.m., so it's no wonder nobody watched, except critics.

But watch they did. They raved about the show's dead-on, painfully accurate portrayal of high-school life as seen through its cast of young unknowns, who included Linda Cardellini, Seth Rogen, James Franco and Jason Segel.

The show has a particularly strong influence on "Glee," whose story -- call it the ultimate tribute to "Freaks and Geeks" -- also takes place at William McKinley High School.