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.
The Cleavers are the 1950′s ‘All-American Family’ in this ‘feel-good’ family sitcom. Parents Ward and June, and older brother Wally, try to keep Theodore (‘the Beaver’) out of trouble. However, Beaver continues to end up in one kind of jam or another. Unlike real life, these situations are always easily resolved to the satisfaction of all involved and the Beaver gets off with a few stern moralistic words of parental advice. Instigator and troublemaker Eddie Haskell is an older kid who always manages to avoid being caught.