The Famous Jett Jackson

The Famous Jett Jackson
Lee Thompson Young as Jett and Kerry Duff as Kayla
Created by	Fracaswell Hyman
Starring	Lee Thompson Young Ryan Sommers Baum Kerry Duff Gordon Greene Montrose Hagins Melanie Nicholls-King
Country of origin	Canada United States
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	3
No. of episodes	65 (list of episodes)
Production
Running time	22 minutes
Production company(s)	Alliance Atlantis Everyone Is JP Kids Disney Channel Original Productions
Distributor	Alliance Atlantis Buena Vista Television
Release
Original network	Disney Channel
Original release	October 25, 1998 (1998-10-25) – June 22, 2001 (2001-06-22)

The Famous Jett Jackson is a joint Canadian and American coming-of-age television series for children about a boy named Jett Jackson (Lee Thompson Young) who plays a teenage secret agent on a fictional TV show-within-a-show called Silverstone.

Jett Jackson previously lived with his actress mother in Los Angeles, but missed his home and his friends. Longing for a relatively normal life, Jett succeeds in getting the production of Silverstone moved to the fictional Wilsted, North Carolina, thus providing jobs to townspeople while affording Jett the chance to live with his father, Sheriff Woodrick "Wood" Jackson, and his great-grandmother, Miz Coretta (whom Jett calls Nana). Keeping in touch with his mother Jules by video link on his computer (though by the third season she also moved to Wilsted), Jett now spends part of his time with family, friends and school, and the rest living the life of a working actor and celebrity. In doing so, Jett often ends up in sticky situations, usually aided and abetted by his childhood friend, J.B., his not-quite girlfriend Kayla, and sometimes by Cubby, Silverstone's wacky special effects wizard. In the second half of the series, Jett's new co-star, Riley Grant, is added to the mix.

The show within the show, Silverstone, is about a spy who works for Mission Omega Matrix (the acronym being a pun on the word "Mom") in order to save the world from villains like Dr. Hypnoto and The Rat. In contrast to Jett, Silverstone has no family, only his mentor, Artemus, and eventually his partner "Hawk" (surname Hawkins) ("played" by Riley Grant). From the second season onward, the action sequences and Silverstone subplots became more prominent.

The relative realism of Jett's home life sometimes gave way to fantasy or paranormal elements, such as one episode in which Jett learns about a shameful incident in Wilsted's history with a little prodding from the ghost of a key figure in the buried scandal. Other episodes dealt with issues in a more realistic and contemporary way, such as when J.B.'s father's family-owned store is threatened by the arrival of high-powered, "big box" competition, and another in which Jett's English teacher, Dr. Dupree, runs afoul of local attempts at censorship of a class reading assignment. Other episodes dealt with such topics as bulimia and the question of whether Jett, with his relatively sheltered and pampered home life, can truly understand or cope with the problems of other African Americans.