`I have breasts - and you have genitalia," says 15-year-old tomboy Joey to her best friend, the hunk known as Dawson - not something the Famous Five tomboy George would say to her pals (though possibly to Timmy the dog). Enid Blyton must be turning in her grave.
Joey (played by newcomer Katie Holmes, 20) is one of the central characters of Dawson's Creek, the glossy US teen soap which is a huge hit with adolescents (and, worryingly, some adults) in the US and Europe, and is now in its second series. So how do you create a number one US drama for the 12 to 17s? First, mix the Aussie Home and Away (for its pretty, waterside small town setting and "teenagers getting into scrapes" plotlines) with the sophisticated, zit-free hunks and babes of Beverly Hills 90210, and then add a hefty dose of Brookside's "we're dealing with a real issue here" sledgehammer approach. The essential ingredient, however, is sex - like This Life, everything must either relate to who is doing what to whom, or who would like to do what to whom. Conceived, developed and written by Kevin Williamson (Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer and the upcoming Killing Mrs Tingle), Dawson's Creek is a rites-of-passage drama for the late 1990s - dealing with teenage angst and over-analysing issues such as single parenthood, drunkenness, masturbation, a student/teacher affair, the first kiss, first love and first heartbreak - and we're promised, first sex.
The teen soap is set in the fictional Capeside, a small coastal town in Massachusetts, where life is not as perfect as it appears - the four lead characters all have their "issues". The smart one, Joey, has a father in prison for drug dealing and lives in an overcrowded house with her unmarried sister, baby and (very radical) her sister's black boyfriend - more reality in one character than many teen dramas have in their whole cast.
Joey, however, is top of the class in 1990s psychobabble - when romance and lust threaten to spoil her boy/girl-next-door friendship with 16-year-old Dawson (James Van der Beek, 21), she warns: "Our raging hormones are destined to alter our relationship, and I'm trying to limit the fallout." The obligatory triangle is created when Joey becomes involved with a newcomer to town, Jack (Kerr Smith). Since Irish teens love the show ("It's so nonjudgmental," says one 16-year-old Dubliner), listen out for Creek-speak, which should be appearing in the conversation of a teenager near you soon.
The good-looking one, Dawson, has real problems - mainly of self-obsession - as he agonises about his seemingly perfect life, his increasingly complicated relationship with Joey and his ambition to be the next Steven Spielberg. Teenagers, however, seem to identify with Dawson's "new man" dilemmas and Van der Beek has become a teenybopper icon in countries as far apart as Finland and Israel.
"Dawson's Creek is fairly universal," says Van der Beek. "For teenagers everywhere, growing up is similarly awkward and Dawson's Creek taps into that. No teenager feels like they are in the `in crowd' or feels all that confident." To criticisms that the soap encourages promiscuity, he says the aim is to "show all sides of an issue and to promote thought and discussion, not to condone promiscuity."
Dawson's best male friend, Pacey (Joshua Jackson, 20), is the wisecracking outsider whose affair with a teacher scandalised the town in the first series. In the current series, he is growing up, and a new romance is helping him deal with his insecurities and a complex relationship with his father. The fourth Dawsonite is pouting, blonde Jen (Michelle Williams, 18) - the girl from New York with "a past" who would like a future with Dawson. Despite being worried about fitting into small town life, Jen tells her grandmother that she'll go to church when grandma says the word "penis". Just another crazy mixed-up kid.
Following in the footsteps of Friends's cast, the stars of Dawson's Creek are somewhat frantically aiming for the big screen. During the break between the two series, the four lead actors filmed eight movies. James Van der Beek stars as a beefy Texan footballer in Varsity Blues - already a number one hit in the US and scheduled to open here in the summer. "Dawson's Creek opened the door to do movies, especially now that Hollywood is more accepting of TV actors," says Van der Beek, who cut his acting teeth in the theatre. "It's ideal - to have a TV job and do movies in the hiatus between each series."
Katie Holmes leads the Creek bratpack with three major roles: Disturbing Behavior, Go, directed by Doug Liman (Swingers), and series creator Kevin Williamson's directorial debut, Killing Mrs Tingle. Joshua Jackson appears soon in Urban Legend, Cruel Inventions and Apt Pupil while Michelle Williams stars with Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween: H2O and with Kirsten Dunst in the comedy, Dick. However, permanent escape from the small screen is not imminent. Van der Beek's contract, for instance, has three years to run - although how long this 21-year-old can convincingly cover his receding hairline and play an adolescent is anyone's guess.
Dawson's Creek is on Network 2, Thursdays, 7.30 p.m. (resumes April 15th); Channel 4, Wednesdays, 6 p.m. and repeated on Sundays, 12.10 p.m.