Quiet on Set:
The Dark Side of Kids TV
"Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV" pulls back the curtain on an empire, built by creator Dan Schneider, that had an undeniable grip on popular culture. Over its four-parts, the docuseries offers unprecedented access to key cast members, writers, and crew spanning Schneider’s popular series at Nickelodeon and spotlighting their emotional accounts; chronicling a pattern of gross, abusive, and manipulative behavior that unfolds across decades, as well as stories about child predators on set. "Quiet on Set" additionally features former Nickelodeon star Drake Bell, sharing publicly, for the first time ever, the abuse he suffered at the hands of Brian Peck, his former dialogue coach who was convicted in 2004 for his crimes against Drake.
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“Quiet on Set” ignited a viral online response and has invigorated a nationwide reckoning with the dark underbelly of children’s entertainment. To date the series has been watched by more than 30 million people across cable network ID and streamers Max and Discovery+, becoming Max’s biggest streaming title ever reported in Nielsen’s Top 10 charts with 1.3 billion minutes watched. In July 2024, "Quiet on Set" won the Television Critics Award for "Outstanding Achievement in News and Information.” The project also received two Emmy nominations for “Outstanding Documentary Or Nonfiction Series” and “Outstanding Picture Editing For A Nonfiction Program.”
It casts the entire children’s-TV landscape as a minefield for parents and kids, who in order to keep their names in the credits are compelled to endure a wide range of improprieties, some of which beget permanent scars. As such, it resonates as a continuation of a tale as old as Hollywood itself, and yet another warning to moms and dads that they should think twice before agreeing to help their juvenile offspring chase A-list glory.
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A heartbreaking expose.
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It wisely contextualizes [Bell’s nightmare] as a symptom of a larger problem within the industry, which habitually treats kids as commodities, scares them into accepting all sorts of indignities lest they jeopardize their highly coveted jobs (and lifelong spotlight aspirations), and doesn’t protect them from adult conduct that ranges from inapt to detrimental to wildly over the line.
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The #MeToo era sparked by the Harvey Weinstein scandal that broke in 2017 exposed a toxic culture of abuse that had long gone unchecked in Hollywood. But it’s taken Robertson and Schwartz blowing the dust off an open secret in the kids TV industry — allegations of abuse, sexism, racism and inappropriate behavior that long swirled around Schneider-led sets — to bring to light claims of inappropriate behavior involving underage stars and crew members on Nickelodeon kids series.
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One of the year's most explosive investigative documentaries....raw and harrowing.
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Full of bombshells.
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Rage-inducing expose.
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By now we’ve heard countless credible #MeToo stories across other areas of Hollywood and across other fields entirely. With Quiet on Set’s release, the children’s-TV version of this reckoning might finally stick. Schneider can no longer hide behind an ominous nickname or the paywall of extremely thorough Business Insider reporting; his purported misdeeds are laid bare in the medium that gave him money, power, and fame. The docuseries makes plain, hopefully once and for all, the very real, non-stranger danger that lurks around children’s show business. We must fully face the deep-seated issues that have plagued Nickelodeon, a supposed safe haven for kids. Don’t change the channel.
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The series brings the damning allegations against Schneider into sharp relief, skewering Nickelodeon’s entire kids TV apparatus that blinded itself to the abuse adult employees and young stars, such as Drake Bell, reportedly faced.
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One of the most disturbing documentaries released this year. What it isn’t is surprising.
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