THERE ARE people I know who wouldn’t be caught dead watching a high school show.

They never saw "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," passing up many an insight into the nature of good and evil - not to mention tons of potentially life-saving information about the undead - because Buffy and her friends began their world-saving exploits in high school.

(Later, the high school was destroyed to save everyone from the town’s mayor, who’d been transformed into a giant serpent, and most of the gang went off to college. But by then it was too late - the damage had been done.)

These same people - some of whom devoted 10 years to watching six only moderately employed young adults hang around a Manhattan coffee shop - can’t be bothered with "Veronica Mars," another clever blonde who also began her adventures in high school. And when I tell them they’re passing up one of the smartest shows on television, they’re unmoved.

"Friday Night Lights"? "The O.C."? "Everwood"? "My So-Called Life"?

All these series - many of them critical darlings, because, well, critics have to at least try everything on our plates before we turn up our noses - have suffered from the misperception that they’re not really meant for grown-ups just because most of their main characters weren’t old enough to vote.

Meanwhile, though, a glance at the weekly Nielsens shows plenty of people watching shows about high school.

Those shows just don’t advertise the fact.

What, after all, is "Grey’s Anatomy" but a show about a Seattle hospital run by high school students?

These adolescents may occasionally save lives, but all the real action’s in the stairwells, where, if they’re not stealing kisses, they’re taking time out of their busy days to explain to one another that some piece of gossip is or isn’t true or that Dr. So-and-So really, really likes Dr. Someone Else.

I mean, they had a prom last season.

Things aren’t all that much more adult over at "Ugly Betty," where Betty Suarez (America Ferrera) is still having to contend with life’s cheerleaders years after high school graduation.

Real cheerleaders, meanwhile, are popping up everywhere from "The Amazing Race" to "Heroes," whose "Save the cheerleader, save the world" may just be the most counterintuitive nerd catchphrase ever.

And make no mistake - nerds are at the bottom of this.

Along with geeks, audio-visual club alumni and former drama-club prop mistresses.

While it would be a sweeping generalization to suggest that many of the people writing for (and OK, about) TV today are still working out a few of their issues from high school, generalizations don’t sweep without picking up some truth along the way.

Aaron Sorkin’s adolescent issues might have been mildly disguised on "The West Wing," but on "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," another show where the prelude to a kiss can last three or more episodes, they’re hiding in plain sight.

And medical terms aside, it’s safe to say "Grey’s" creator Shonda Rhimes learned everything she needed to know about doctors in love in high school.

"Boston Legal," "The Office," "Desperate Housewives" - take out your yearbook and I promise they’ll all start to make more sense.

The irony is that a show like "Friday Night Lights," most of whose main characters are actually in high school, appeals more to the adult in me than anything I’ve seen this season on "Grey’s" or "Studio 60."

Because the truth, and the frustration, of adolescence so often lies in teenagers’ inability to control their circumstances, there’s genuine poignancy in their day-to-day dramas, whether it’s a paralyzed athlete dealing with unexpected limits and changed relationships or a coach’s daughter weighing her mistrust of football players against her attraction to one in particular.

Without the money or power of doctors, lawyers or even fashion-magazine employees, the kids in high school shows often have no choice but to deal with what’s right in front of them. Little wonder then that they’re at the center of their own small universes.

Transplant those dramas into an adult setting, though, and what you too often end up with is merely so-called grown-ups behaving like children.