On adolescents for adolescents By 2022, series and films about the generation of buzzers came out a decent number. We’ve seen Sex Education, Heartstopper, The Sex Lives of College Girls, and a lot of others, and Netflix is ahead of the planet. However, this series was able to stand out and find its fans.
The first thing that caught my eye was a rather original and unpredictable story. Even though Harper’s mysterious behavior gave me a hunch from the start, the rest of the plot twists were very unexpected.
The second important thing for me is the realistic characters. Generation buzzers in modern TV series are often depicted quite caricatured, sexualize the bodies of teenagers (series Euphoria, I look at you), deny or exaggerate the role of social networks, overdo it with slang, try to imitate the awakened culture. In this series, teenagers are much more like teenagers, and although their lives are still quite far from the life of a typical Russian high school student, they are much easier to sympathize with.
The third is the issues the series raises. There are contemporary issues that have only recently begun to be discussed in society, such as the need for sex education, sexual violence, attitudes towards people with autism, nonbinarity, asexuality, racial discrimination, but there are also eternal adolescent problems: how to cope with being betrayed by your best friend? How do you survive bullying at school? What do you do if your heart is broken? What is true friendship? It seems to me very right that the authors did not focus exclusively on the current agenda and built their history on more universal, but no less important topics, revealing them from a new angle.
And finally, by all standard parameters, the series is very good. The cast, acting, revealing the characters, the dynamism and validity of the plot - everything is at the level.
I’m definitely looking forward to a second season.
9 out of 10