{"id":168688,"date":"2025-12-05T00:57:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T00:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/168688\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T00:57:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T00:57:07","slug":"maxton-hall-helps-fill-a-void-left-by-the-cws-ya-dramas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/168688\/","title":{"rendered":"Maxton Hall helps fill a void left by The CW’s YA dramas"},"content":{"rendered":"

The premise of Maxton Hall: The World Between Us will not surprise anyone even vaguely aware of romance tropes. Enemies to lovers? Check. Cocky rich boy falls for a plucky girl of limited means who turns his life around? Check. Dreaded stuff like a student-teacher relationship, a teen pregnancy, and a mean-girl clique? Check. The German-language series, based on Mona Kasten\u2019s Save Me books, has a familiar YA recipe. Prime Video\u2019s drama belongs to the ilk of The O.C.<\/a>, Gossip Girl<\/a>, Pretty Little Liars, and One Tree Hill, with its ingredients blending together for a familiar meal, the kind you return to every once in a while for comfort at the risk of digesting a few ridiculous plotlines. Maxton Hall doesn\u2019t care about subverting a formula because the show is too busy embracing it.<\/p>\n

If the reportedly stellar ratings are any indication, sticking to a well-worn pattern has paid off. Season one, which premiered in 2024, became the streaming platform\u2019s most-watched international original<\/a> series at the time. No wonder Prime Video renewed it for a couple more rounds immediately. Per Variety<\/a>, the sophomore run, which ended November 28, also cracked the top spot. And the third season has already wrapped filming<\/a>. So what makes Maxton Hall consistently tick, despite some nonsensical narratives? The main credit goes to co-stars Damian Hardung and Harriet Herbig-Matten, whose sizzling chemistry makes their characters\u2019 angst soar. Without the charged banter and sexual tension between James Beaufort and Ruby Bell, Maxton Hall just wouldn\u2019t leave an impact.<\/p>\n

In a tale as old as time, their swoonworthy love story begins with a fiery clash. After Ruby walks in on James\u2019 twin sister in an intimate moment with a professor, James offers to pay Ruby money in exchange for her silence. He takes advantage of the fact that she can only attend private school (one that looks like an opulent castle) thanks to a scholarship. Of course, she shuts him up and kicks off a short-lived rivalry instead. Their fierce competitiveness quickly gives way to undeniable attraction. Maxton Hall finds its groove as it navigates their burgeoning romance and its many hurdles. At the top of this obstacle list is a perceived class difference. James is next in line to be the CEO of his family\u2019s thriving global business, while Ruby works multiple jobs to help buy back her mother\u2019s beloved bakery and afford her dream of going to Oxford University. Their social circles and professional goals are miles apart. Yet they find an emotional connection that adds much-needed depth to an otherwise ordinary tale.<\/p>\n

If the first season spent six episodes on a slow-burn evolution, then the second focuses on the grounded, real-life issues between James and Ruby. For starters, he finds it tough to move on after his mother\u2019s sudden death, partly because there\u2019s no one to shield him and his sibling, Lydia (Sonja Wei\u00dfer), from their controlling, evil, sexist father, Mortimer (Fedja van Hu\u00eat). So his coping mechanisms include alcohol, parties, and making out with another classmate in front of Ruby, who faces problems of her own. Ruby\u2019s entire focus is to ensure her Oxford admission and get a coveted internship, not chase after her boy toy. She\u2019s not here to save James, as she states to his face. Thankfully, Maxton Hall knows it\u2019s strongest when Hardung and Herbing-Matten are onscreen together, so their breakup is as brief as their rivalry. But the reunion comes courtesy of necessary character development. James works on himself by going to therapy, openly discussing its benefits, confronting Mortimer, and standing up for both Ruby and Lydia. All these elements bring nuance to Maxton Hall\u2018s YA soapiness.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A few recent shows like The Summer I Turned Pretty<\/a>, My Life With The Walter Boys<\/a>, and Tell Me Lies<\/a> thrive on love triangles, miscommunication, and toxic entanglements. In contrast, Maxton Hall\u2019s saccharine, sexy, even somewhat grown-up romance is a lovely break. A captivating execution helps viewers overlook the show\u2019s other flaws. A big drawback, much like in Kasten\u2019s source material, is a defense of the affair between Lydia and her teacher, Graham Sutton (Eidin Jalali). While Maxton Hall repeatedly clarifies that they hooked up before meeting in school, a TV show indulging in this type of \u201ccouple,\u201d without calling it grooming, is maddening. Did we learn nothing from PLL\u2018s Aria and Ezra debacle? And then there\u2019s Mortimer\u2019s endless interference. To stop his son from seeing Ruby, he wreaks havoc in her life by getting her mother fired and Ruby\u2019s internship revoked. Mortimer also pays no heed to Lydia, who shows acumen for the job over James. In other words, he\u2019s a stereotypical mustache-twirling villain in the vein of OTH\u2018s Dan Scott and Gossip Girl\u2018s Bart Bass.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maxton Hall derives surface-level melodrama from these side arcs and tosses in some spice with silly theme parties, galas, debates, and whatnot. It\u2019s all classic CW\u2014and is notably in the wake of that network fizzling out its teen dramas. Maxton Hall\u2018s viewership numbers alone prove that audiences are likely starved for comfort food of this nature. So after the end of Prime Video\u2019s other YA hit, TSITP, and before Bridgerton\u2018s theatrics return<\/a> next month, Maxton Hall should sate viewers craving a heavy serving of giddy romance.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Saloni Gajjar is The A.V. Club\u2018s TV critic.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The premise of Maxton Hall: The World Between Us will not surprise anyone even vaguely aware of romance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":["post-168688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}