I don’t remember much about the show except one scene (see below). I don’t think it was on the air very long, maybe a year, around 1981 give or take a couple of years. It was about a high school boy who for some reason had to move to Boston to attend a new school, which he hated at first. I not sure why he moved, but I want to say his parents sent him to boarding school or to live with a relative. He had a girlfriend in his old hometown and in one episode he went home to visit her (or she went to Boston to visit him). The only scene I remember is one where he and the girlfriend go into the woods with a sleeping bag to have sex. They took off some of their clothes, but they never did the deed. The scene struck me as quite risque for broadcast television at the time. Sound familiar?
The cobwebs of my mind are offering “James at 15”
I remember the pilot. I think the girlfriend was played by Melissa Sue Anderson. He also had an affair with a teacher played by Kate Jackson, IIRC.
Wow, three minutes. That’s why I love this place. Yes, that’s the one. Thanks. http://www.tv.com/james-at-15/show/865/trivia.html It aired quite a lot earlier than I thought, 1977-78. I 'm surprised I didn’t remember that the girlfriend was played by Melissa Sue Anderson.
Did anyone else get it right just from the thread title?
I used to watch that show. For some reason, the only scene I remember is the one where the first day he went to his new school, all the kids were dressed up and he was the only one not wearing a button-down shirt, tie and blazer. At home that night he freaked and insisted his parents take him out to buy new clothes so he’d fit in at school. The next day he showed up in tie and jacket to discover, to his horror, that only the first day of school is dress-up day, and everyone else was dressed casually. Day two of humiliation, welcome to the new school.
I think it stuck with me because I’ve been there. Not with proper high school attire, just general early teen embarrassment. I felt for that kid.
Yes.
I even remember a bit of the opening song, that refrain “oh oh oh oh oh oh James.”
I had made a long-distance move at 14 and could relate quite a bit to poor James.
His girlfriend looked Melissa Sue Anderson and he had an affair with a teacher who looked like Kate Jackson? We heterosexual high school aged males should all be so poor. 
I got it from the title and also said to myself, “Self, that was more like 1978-79”.
Didn’t the show last just long enough to be called James at 16?
The series is also immortalized in the Beastie Boys song “Hey Ladies” lyric:
“I’m not James at 15 or Chachi in Charge, I’m Adam and I’m adamant about livin large”
Yeah… If I recall correctly, the network powers-that-be didn’t want him to “do the deed” (as the OP so delicately put it) until after he turned 16.
Yep.
As I recall:
Kate Jackson was never his teacher, she was a hitchhiker who befriended him after he ran away from home, and they never had sex. In fact, he embarrassed himself by jumping her after mistaking something she did as an invitation.
The first day of school was picture day, so all the boys were wearing jackets and ties. An upperclassman tell James that’s how they dress every day, that he should just go home now before he gets in trouble, and come back the next day properly dressed. James doesn’t “freak out and demand a new suit” – he goes to school wearing his dad’s tie and ill-fitting tweed jacket (well, looked like tweed to me, with patches on the elbows!), and is again humiliated, especially by the guys who set him up in the first place.
James did have repeated vivid fantasies about a teacher, but she was a blonde swimming teacher and they never had sex (nor, in fact, did they even talk to each other much, if at all).
It would be my guess from the thread title. The description made it a lock. I remember how ‘controversial’ the series was especially when he was supposed to lose his virginity.
I did and I’m not that up on my James at 15 trivia.
That was my first guess, but it was answered before I had a chance to check.
Yes.
I saw an interview with series star Lance Kerwin a few years ago. He now has a weird Joe-Walsh-like speech impediment, and is a Jesus freak.
Or at least those two things were true at the time of the interview, which again was years ago.
Yes.
My sole surviving memory of the show is when his father arranged to have a gorgeous prostitute relieve him of his virginity. I couldn’t believe he didn’t take advantage of such an opportunity. Or so I remember.
The WIkipedia article says one of the shows writers quit or something over having to change the words “birth-control” to “responsible” in one episode. These two don’t seem remotely interchangeable.
I remember one scary night in my past when the responsible broke, and we had to go to a clinic the next day for some morning-after responsibility.