Watch The First Five Awful Minutes Of Lifetime’s ‘Saved By The Bell’ Movie

In June this year, the Lifetime Movie Network announced they would soon be airing The Unauthorised Saved By The Bell Story – a completely unnecessary ‘behind-the-scenes’ film about the late-’80s/early-’90s sitcom, cast by the guy who found the stars of the show.

Told from the perspective of Dustin Diamond (Screech), and executive produced by Diamond himself, the shameless nostalgia grab would “expose” how the stars dealt with the pressures of fame and hormones — themes that were already “exposed” quite terribly in Diamond’s ghost-written 2009 memoir, Behind The Bell. (Not even kidding about this book cover.)

But although it would have made sense to base the film on the executive producer’s book, Lifetime claim that they’ve used other sources.

From a legal point of view, this seems reasonable: Diamond himself has distanced himself from some of the stories that were told in his book, specifically those about illegal drug use, and all of the sexy sex they were having.

And there’s a much heavier allegation buried in Diamond’s book as well: that the show’s producers paid a girl around $50k of hush-money to drop date rape charges she had laid against Mario Lopez, who played A.C. Slater.

Judging by how light and fluffy the first five minutes of the film look, Lifetime prooooobably won’t be touching that last point with a ten foot pole.