As I understand it, early ’90s North American TV commissioning leaned more on cautious number-crunching than creative instinct. The question wasn’t so much “is this good?” as “will boys watch?” Female-led shows did exist, but rarely like Clarissa Explains It All, which sidestepped romance and approval in favour of a more self-aware, idiosyncratic voice. Not exactly revolutionary, especially from a UK perspective, but distinct enough amid a wave of US imports to feel like a quiet departure from the norm.

The “risk” wasn’t controversy so much as commercial uncertainty. Nickelodeon, under Geraldine Laybourne, was in an early experimental phase, focused on building a clear identity through original programming. That experimentation was strategic rather than reckless, and in that context Clarissa wasn’t a shot in the dark, but a calculated step beyond the usual template that helped define the network.