A press packet for the “musical thriller” Sweeney Todd arrived in the PLAY mail this week.

PLAY gets dozens of these packages every week, so this one didn’t strike me as anything extraordinary – until people in the newsroom started freaking out. Apparently Sweeney Todd, subtitled The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, is the hot ticket on Broadway, and I’m just way out of the loop. As my colleagues expressed shock at my lack of theater culture, I, too, realized that very few of my peers remember a little gem of a family television drama titled Life Goes On.

You see, Patti LuPone gets top billing in this production of Sweeney Todd. Her name sounded familiar, and after a bit of thought her face appeared in my head in conjuction with “Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes ooon, whoooa” – a flashback to the opening credits of one of the shows I routinely watched as a child. As soon as I realized the mother from Life Goes On is now portraying a woman who makes meat pies out of human corpses, I asked around to see if anybody else could join me in my nostalgia for TV days of yore.

I explained it was a family drama starring Kellie Martin as Becca Thatcher; only one person recognized the show. When it came up that one of the main characters, Corky (played by Chris Burke) had Down syndrome, the light bulb went off for a few more people. Then we discussed how another character, Jesse (played by Chad Lowe), was HIV-positive and brought up themes of sex and mature relationships. When we started discussing various storylines, we realized what an innovative program Life Goes On was – one that openly dealt with huge social issues that other shows in the late ’80s and early ’90s refused to tackle.

And growing up with a younger sister with a mental disability, seeing such complex yet honest portrayals on a prime-time show helped reinforce for me how important it was to accept those who we don’t necessarily understand or relate with. As cliche as that lesson may seem now, as an 8-year-old who was learning how to defend her little sister to mean kids (and at some point, we were sadly all one of those bullies), the degree of cheesiness didn’t resonate.

So thank you, press people at Sweeney Todd, for reminding me of a classic show that more people should remember as an instigator for social dialogue and showing how to relate with other people at such a young age. LuPone may now be singing about making mince-meat pies out of customers at her partner’s barber shop on Broadway, but to me she’ll always be Libby Thatcher. The Life Goes On press people should consider putting the series out on DVD – it would have at least one ready buyer.

Medill senior Kim Jeffries is the PLAY editor. She can be reached at [email protected].