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Leave It to Beaver is a 1950s and 1960s family-oriented American
television situation comedy about an inquisitive but often naive boy named
Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver and his adventures at home, in school, and around his
suburban neighborhood. The show has attained an
iconic status in the United States, with the Cleavers exemplifying the idealized suburban family of the mid-twentieth century.
One of the first
primetime sitcom series filmed from a child's point-of-view, the show was created by
Joe Connelly and
Bob Mosher, two
radio and early television writers, who found inspiration for the show's characters, plots, and dialogue in the lives, experiences, and conversations of their own children. Like several television dramas and sitcoms of the late fifties and early sixties (
Lassie and
My Three Sons, for example),
Leave It to Beaver is a glimpse at
middle-class, American
boyhood. A typical episode features Beaver getting into some sort of trouble and facing his parents for reprimand and correction.