Eerie, Indiana

Eerie, Indiana is an American television series created by José Rivera and Karl Schaefer, with Joe Dante serving as creative consultant. It originally aired on NBC from September 15, 1991 to April 12, 1992.

The series follows 13-year-old Marshall Teller (Omri Katz), who sees the strange side of Eerie, Indiana which others fail to see. His sidekick and friend, 10-year-old Simon Holmes (Justin Shenkarow), helps him gather evidence of the town's strangeness.

Development
Karl Schaefer intended the series for adults, calling Eerie, Indiana "a piece of social satire done through the eyes of a 13-year-old." He said, "It was always about society at large, with a lot of double entendres."

However, the show was put in the 7:30 time slot on Sundays, which meant it had to be appropriate for kids down to two years old. Because of this, Schaefer had a child psychologist review each episode, explaining: "I try to balance the moral center of the episode and the point of the episode, so that you can put up with the scariness along the way."

NBC later wanted to "expand the focus of the show" and make it appeal more to adults. They were interested in adding characters a little weirder than the producers were pursuing. The creators changed the premise of the show a little, adding Dash X as a new and weirder character and John Astin as Mr. Radford as a sort of adult mentor for the kids.

Filming
Eerie, Indiana was filmed in Studio City in California, with one and a half blocks of backlot used for the sets.

Reception
In its initial run on NBS, the series aired opposite "60 Minutes" and got poor ratings.