Glee started life as a film idea and ended with 729 songs
Ian Brennan first imagined his show-choir story as a feature film. Reworked for Fox television with Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, Glee ran from 2009 to 2015, staged more than 729 musical numbers across 121 episodes, and sold over 36 million digital singles within its first two and a half years.
The setting is William McKinley High in Lima, Ohio, where Spanish teacher Will Schuester revives a fading glee club, rechristened New Directions, after its previous director is fired. His obstacles are comic and relentless: a troubled marriage, feelings for a colleague, and the cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester, who schemes to destroy the club. Every episode leaned on performances picked by Murphy and produced by Adam Anders and Peer Astrom, mixing Broadway standards with current hits.
Brennan, Murphy and Falchuk wrote most of the first two seasons, and the latter two directed the early episodes. A pilot aired on 19 May 2009, months before the official start that September. By 2011 Fox trusted the show enough to schedule it straight after its Super Bowl XLV coverage, and the cast toured live after each of the first two seasons, with a concert film reaching cinemas in August 2011.
Much of the show's weight came from its outsiders. Kurt Hummel, openly gay from the first season, and Santana Lopez, a cheerleader wrestling with her sexuality, gave prime-time television storylines about coming out and bullying that it had rarely carried before. Later seasons added a transgender character, Unique Adams, and plots about disability, eating disorders and dyslexia.
The competitive arc stretched across years: a Sectionals win and Regionals defeat in season one, a first national title in Chicago in season three, and then a twist in season five when Sue, now principal, shut the club down for budget reasons. That season was also shaped by loss, since Cory Monteith, who played quarterback Finn Hudson, died the summer before filming. Critics liked the first season more than the rest, yet the series still collected six Emmys and four Golden Globes before ending on 20 March 2015.
Source: Glee (TV series)
