Persephone Fraser (Sadie Soverall) is sad. \u201cMy whole world is filled with regret because of the choices I made,\u201d she says forlornly as she clutches an oversized coffee cup, while standing at best friend Chantal (Aurora Perrineau)\u2019s marble kitchen island. Regret? How can this be? Even Persephone \u2013 or Percy, for short (\u201cit\u2019s easier\u201d) \u2013 is perplexed. After all, she splutters, shrugging her cashmered shoulders at the gosh-darn inexplicability of it all, \u201cI have one of the only remaining jobs in journalism, I have a cute apartment and I have hot men to hook up with!\u201d Yet still; guffaws come there none. Percy needs closure. \u201cI can\u2019t move on and I know I have to,\u201d she whimpers as the soundtrack reaches tearfully for its acoustic guitar. The answer? \u201cI need to say goodbye [TWANG] \u2026 to Barry\u2019s Bay.\u201d<\/p>\n
And with that we\u2019re off. Specifically, we\u2019re off to Barry\u2019s Bay, the dinky Ontario lakeside town that is both the source of Percy\u2019s turmoil and the picturesque setting for the barrel of escapist tosh that is Every Year After.<\/p>\n
Based on a 2022 novel by Canadian author Carley Fortune and showrun by Amy B \u201cGossip Girl\u201d Harris, the romantic drama is about, cough, \u201cthe big stuff\u201d: love, death, growing up, heartbreak and scenes in which Percy, 28, says things such as \u201cSometimes the currents can feel like they\u2019re against us!\u201d Above all, however, it means hunks. To wit: there is Jordie (Joseph Chiu), a thoughtful hunk who works at the local motel. There is Charlie (Michael Bradway), a bulky hunk who wears board shorts in an occasionally successful attempt to distinguish himself from the mountains that overlook Barry\u2019s Bay. And there is Charlie\u2019s younger brother Sam (Matt Cornett), the alpha-hunk whose existence is the reason Percy will spend the next eight episodes wandering around with an expression suggestive of a recent and not insignificant head injury.<\/p>\n
Michael Bradway as Charlie Florek with Matt Cornett in Every Year After. Photograph: Cate Cameron\/Prime<\/p>\n
The hunks celebrate their hunkery by engaging in bouts of horseplay at the lake that serves as a backdrop to their emotional entanglements and a metaphor for youth\/freedom\/the intransigence of time, etc. This includes wrestling by the lake in shorts, hurling each other into the lake in shorts, and emerging from the lake while running their fingers through their hair and saying \u201cyeeaaahhh\u201d (in shorts).<\/p>\n
Not that any of this is gratuitous or superfluous to the plot, you understand. Indeed, Jordie, Charlie and Sam are horny-handed hunks of toil and their well-oiled musculature is put to regular practical use in the town\u2019s kitchens and outhouses. We see this in scenes such as a) Charlie repairs a fridge in his late mom\u2019s tavern while stripped to the waist, and b) Sam washes a plate while panting in a vest.<\/p>\n
Around these near-naked bollards of masculinity slaloms Percy, whose return to Barry\u2019s Bay after a decade-long absence brings with it much angst. Wistful flashbacks slowly unfurl the reason for much of the above. In 2011, we learn, Percy\u2019s parents bought a holiday home in the lakeside town, whereupon the bookish adolescent bonded with puppyish neighbour Sam (\u201cI\u2019m Sam!\u201d). Subsequent summer visits saw teenage friendship bloom into teenage love until, inevitably, Something Bad Happened. Now, after the death of Sam and Charlie\u2019s beloved mom Sue (Elisha Cuthbert), our troubled protagonist feels compelled to return to the site of said Bad\/Sadness to put her post-pubescent demons to rest.<\/p>\n
Michael Bradway and Sadie Soverall in Every Year After. Photograph: Justine Yeung\/Prime Video<\/p>\n
Much handwringing doth ensue, and while the fondant-y soundtrack does its best to distract us from the realisation that this is essentially The Summer I Turned Pretty in big girl pants, questions bob like buoys \u2013 and, indeed, boys \u2013 around Percy\u2019s shapely ankles. Will she exercise caution in her dealings with the suspiciously well-adjusted Sam? Will old rifts be healed and new engagements forged?<\/p>\n
There are no huge surprises and several gifted actors seem to be locked in an interminable WWE cage match with a script that requires them to say things that no human should ever be required to utter (\u201cAdulting is no joke!\u201d). But oh, the lake! The endless cerulean lake, so tolerant of the witless peacocking of its emotionally fragile resident hunks! It\u2019s as difficult to resist the verdant wonder of Barry\u2019s Bay as it is to remain unaffected by the sweetness with which this twaddle goes about its labours.<\/p>\n
Grab your shorts and [TWANG] jump in.<\/p>\n
Every Year After is on Prime Video<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Persephone Fraser (Sadie Soverall) is sad. \u201cMy whole world is filled with regret because of the choices I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470301,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":["post-470300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}