How Good Morning, Miss Bliss Evolved Into Saved By The Bell

For many children of the 1990s Saved By The Bell was a Saturday morning TV staple but it actually started as a different show – here’s how Good Morning, Miss Bliss evolved into the much-loved teen sitcom. Good Morning, Miss Bliss was originally conceived as a new primetime series for NBC in the late 1980s. Inspired by a childhood teacher of then NBC president Brandon Tartikoff, it focused on a character named Miss Carrie Bliss (Hayley Mills) who taught sixth grade at a school in Indianapolis.

The pilot episode of Good Morning, Miss Bliss aired in 1987 and featured a cast that included future Beverly Hills, 90210 star Brian Austin Green and Jonathan Brandis, who would later star in the 1990 It miniseries. After NBC decided the show wasn’t for them, it moved on to a primetime slot on the Disney Channel where it was retooled somewhat. While Mills stayed on as Miss Bliss, the rest of the pilot cast did not and the series placed greater focus on her students who had been aged up to junior high.

There were some familiar Saved By The Bell faces among the students and staff on the second iteration of Good Morning, Miss Bliss. There was the cheeky but charming Zack Morris (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), rich girl Lisa Turtle (Lark Voorhees), nerd Samuel “Screech” Powers (Dustin Diamond) and principal Belding (Dennis Haskins). Unfortunately, Good Morning, Miss Bliss failed to find an audience and was dropped after just 13 episodes.

Brandon Tartikoff was still unwilling to give up on the premise so Good Morning, Miss Bliss went back to NBC and reframed for the network’s Saturday morning kid-oriented slot. Miss Bliss was dropped, the focus moved entirely to the students and the show officially became Saved By The Bell. Though Gosselaar, Voorhees, Diamond, and Haskins stayed on in their Good Morning, Miss Bliss roles, several changes were made. The action was moved from Indiana to the fictional Bayside High School in Los Angeles and characters like popular girl Kelly Kapowski (Tiffani Thiessen), jock A.C. Slater (Mario Lopez) and overachiever Jessie Spano (Elizabeth Berkley) were added.

Good Morning, Miss Bliss was totally forgotten about, however. The show was later repackaged as Saved By The Bell: The Junior High Years and included new opening sequences featuring Zack Morris explaining they were a flashback to his younger years. That threw up a few continuity issues like the fact viewers were meant to believe several students and a member of staff moved en masse from Indianapolis to California. Or that Zack had supposedly known Kelly and Jessie for years although they were never mentioned on Good Morning, Miss Bliss, or Zack having a sister and divorced parents in Good Morning… but in Saved By The Bell his parents were together and he was an only child.

Glaring continuity issues aside, after it morphed from Good Morning, Miss Bliss into Saved By The Bell, the show ran for four seasons and spawned spinoffs Saved By The Bell: The College Years and Saved By The Bell: The New Class alongside a couple of feature-length TV movies. The legacy of both Good Morning, Miss Bliss lives on too with the recent announcement that NBCU is set to revive Saved By The Bell with a sequel series starring Mario Lopez and Elizabeth Berkley.