Background Information

About the Darling Family

Marshall Darling is a self-employed architect who works from home, his main line of business is designing eye-catching retail premises, although he has received an award for his bathroom designs. Janet Darling is a former dancer who now works at The Children's Museum. Janet is a health food freak and normally serves the family with vegetarian dishes, although she will occasionally cook a meat dish when she feels it is required of her (Marshall's Parents Visit).

Clarissa is the older of their two children, and probably goes from 13 to 17 years old during the course of the series. Her brother, Ferguson, is about two years younger than her. Both Clarissa and Ferguson go to Thomas Tupper (Junior) High School, as does Clarissa's best friend Sam Anders. One of the minor mysteries is exactly when Clarissa and Ferguson move from the Junior High to the High School itself.

Where they live...

We know for certain that they live at Number 44 in a street called as Shadow Lane. Nothing else is stated for certain, but there is a significant amount of information in the series that places their home in Evanston, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. For a detailed discussion of that evidence, see a seperate document on the subject.

Behind The Scenes

There's also a seperate document on The TV series itself which includes information on where it was made, behind the scenes photos and details of a potential follow on series.

Other sources of information

World Wide Web

Anonymous FTP

There is an extensive Clarissa Explains It All archive on ftp.tcp.com in /pub/clarissa which includes Adam Lieberman's Descriptive Episode List, archives of the clarissa mailing list and an archive of images from the Show.

There is also a copy of the images in the tcp.com archive on ftp.ee.surrey.ac.uk in /pub/images/tv-shows/Clarissa. This archive also includes some images I've captured myself for use in the Web server.

Mailing List

There is a mailing list called clarissa also maintained at tcp.com. Send mail to majordomo@tcp.com with a body of subscribe clarissa to join. Please do remember that this is an unoffical list of fan discussions about the series and that it does not include Melissa Joan Hart or anyone else directly connected to the series. Also majordomo is an automatic mailling list manager, be patient if it doesn't make sense of your request immediately.

See also our index of Nickelodeon shows with guides on the Web.


B.King@ee.surrey.ac.uk
27th September 1995