This is a 3 part PBS Mini-series

TITLES/YEAR: The Prodigious Hickey (1987), The Return of Hickey (1988), The Beginning of the Firm (1989)
STARS: Zach Galligan, Edward Herrmann (The Lost Boys), Robert Joy (Waterworld), Nicholas Rowe, Stephen Baldwin, Albert Schultz, Josh Hamilton (Alive)
DIRECTOR: Robert Iscove
CATEGORY: Drama/Comedy
Ann's RATING: 7.5 out of 10

Ann's Review:  I had a hard time finding these movies because they are only available in the US and Canada. I'm glad I finally tracked them down. The Lawrenceville Stories is a good-natured private school boy romp. Kind of like Dead Poets' Society but with less drama and more pranks. All the young actors are great. (many of them are Canadian) Stephen plays "GutterPup" a guy who loves to box and has a very competitive nature. He is not one of the leads but he appears in quite a lot of entertaining scenes. Watch out for Dave Foley too (although confusingly, he plays a different character in the third part). There are 3 parts to this series and I strongly suggest you see all three in a row. The third was my favorite. It's basically about two rival boarding school houses who have a tradition of playing pranks. Hickey is the ring leader and is always coming up with new and exciting stuff. He never gets caught. One day he goes too far and is suspended. He is allowed to return some time later and to his annoyance the school has been taken over by a new kid whom he nicknames "The Tennessee Shad". His pranks are just as good as Hickey's used to be. They try to outdo each other until a snooty rich-kid arrives and they decide to join forces.

The cover blurb says- From the pen of the gifted and much-loved writer Owen Johnson comes these stories of turn-of-the-century American schoolboys at their most inventive and outrageous. Meet "The Prodigious Hickey," William Hicks, who leads his prep-school classmates through a series of comedic pranks that incur the bemused but unhappy ire of the school's headmaster. Hicks and his worthy rival "The Tennessee Shad" scheme to outdo each other in earning the loyalty of their peers (and the secret admiration of the principal).