Aimed at a teenaged audience, the show is semi-autobiographical, being based on the small-town childhood of its creator Kevin Williamson (who also wrote the slasher film Scream). The lead character, Dawson Leery, shares Williamson's interests and background. Filmed in Wilmington and Durham, North Carolina, the show was set in a small fictional seaside town called Capeside and focused on four friends who were in the early part of their Sophomore year of high school when the series began. The program, part of a craze for teen-themed movies and television shows in America in the late 1990s, made stars of its leads and was a defining show for The WB. Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times declared in 2005 that "The WB is turning out to be the television equivalent of the United Nations" and that "Dawson's Creek was its Dag Hammarskold: It was the first series bold enough to pick up the mantle of Beverly Hills, 90210 and an inspiration for many variations on the teenage angst theme, including The O.C. on Fox."

Dawson's Creek generated a high amount of publicity before its debut, with several television critics and watchdog groups expressing concerns about its anticipated "racy" plots and dialogue; the controversy even drove one of the original production companies away from the project, but numerous critics praised it for its realism and intelligent dialogue that included allusions to American television icons such as The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. By the end of its run, the show, its crew, and its young cast had been nominated for numerous awards, winning four of them. The series is known for the verbosity and complexity of the dialogue between its teenaged characters who commonly demonstrate vocabulary and cultural awareness that went beyond the scope of the average high school student, yet that is combined with an emotional immaturity and self-absorption reflecting actual teens. This precociousness has been a staple of a number of teenaged-themed shows since, notably including Gilmore Girls and The O.C.

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