{"id":728299,"date":"2026-08-05T13:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T13:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/728299\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T13:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T13:24:09","slug":"sterling-point-review-this-teen-drama-from-gossip-girls-creators-is-brilliant-escapist-tv-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/728299\/","title":{"rendered":"Sterling Point review \u2013 this teen drama from Gossip Girl\u2019s creators is brilliant escapist TV | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ll be honest: I was prepared to grit my teeth through Sterling Point, Prime Video\u2019s newest coming-of-age offering, which I dismissed as another by-the-numbers high-school drama. The show follows a type-A teen on a journey of sun-dappled self-discovery, escaping her native New York for an idyllic getaway on a picturesque Canadian island. It\u2019s an unassuming, summer camp-style narrative, but in the style of last year\u2019s seasonal phenomenon that was series three of The Summer I Turned Pretty<\/a>, it manages to transcend the limits of its YA niche, revealing itself to be quite juicy.<\/p>\n

Protagonist Annie (Ella Rubin) is a highly strung 17-year-old, still reeling from a rejection from a summer business school programme when she receives the news that her estranged maternal grandfather has left her some mysterious assets. Annie, whose mother had died years ago, and her twin Connor (Keen Ruffalo), are prompted to start digging through family secrets, much to the distress of their dad (Jay Duplass of Transparent and Industry). The two learn that they\u2019ve inherited a house in Canada \u2013 prompting Annie to take off on a secret trip in search of answers about her late mother\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

We find ourselves on Sterling Point where Annie quickly finds herself a group of free-spirited friends, including Oona (Bo Bragason), the carefree and sexually forward linchpin of the group; Ellis (Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie), the cheeky local who flies Annie out to the island on a precarious seaplane; Rory (Daniel Quinn-Toye), a sensitive New Yorker who gets compared to Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet; and Ramona (Am\u00e9lie Elisabeth Hoeferle), who drops a bombshell at the end of the show\u2019s first episode. It rapidly becomes clear that the group is going to spend their leisurely time swimming in beautiful lakes, boating and crushing on each other.<\/p>\n

Lake effect … Ella Rubin and Bo Bragason in Sterling Point. Photograph: Sabrina Lantos\/Prime Video<\/p>\n

Beyond an intriguing central plot full of familial mysteries \u2013 which I can\u2019t go into without entirely spoiling things \u2013 the show is doing something interesting in its generational context. Unlike the sort of timeless, placeless high-schoolers that millennial-plus screenwriters often dream up, these gen Z and gen alpha characters (from the creators of My Old Ass<\/a> and Gossip Girl) talk like actual young people, and reflect their modern preoccupations.<\/p>\n

Among this crew, there\u2019s lots of fluidity, and an overflow of emotional literacy. Oona\u2019s little sister, Maple (Mabel Strachan), is casually reading Bessel van der Kolk\u2019s The Body Keeps the Score<\/a>: \u201cI need to find out what the score is, and where in the body it\u2019s being kept.\u201d The sexualities of many of the characters are a sort of question mark, slowly emerging or shifting as the show goes on, reminiscent of coming-of-age forebears such as The Half of It<\/a> and Booksmart<\/a>. No one\u2019s gender or queerness is turned into a major plot point, reflecting the fact that more than one in five gen Zs identify as LGBTQ+<\/a>. I laughed out loud at a quip about Oona, who, like her own mother, has repeated noncommittal flings that don\u2019t turn into anything serious. \u201cSo she\u2019s avoidant attached? We can work through that,\u201d says 17-year-old Connor.<\/p>\n

The bounds of the YA genre, and of television, feel pretty flexible here. Lines get blundered a few times, and the cameras keep rolling \u2013 since the young actors were explicitly encouraged to improvise on set. There are moments where this can fall a bit flat: a punchline doesn\u2019t quite land, or you experience the metaphorical emotional equivalent of seeing a boom in shot. But this also allows for a looser, more authentic feel. The plot and pacing take the same approach \u2013 in the spirit of Duplass\u2019s Transparent<\/a>, sometimes a plotline gets teed up and then completely disappears, subverting the usual rules of television and making things feel more frenetic.<\/p>\n

Again, there are drawbacks to this approach. More than once, the show contains what feels like a glaring plot hole. But the strangeness of these plotting and script flourishes creates an electricity that is actually more interesting than the love triangles, paternity secrets and other age-old devices at play here.<\/p>\n

In April, season three of the once boundary-pushing teen drama Euphoria was met with flop reviews<\/a>. The darkness that had once distinguished and sustained the show had spiralled out of control into a nightmarish, violent and hallucinatory sex fest. The show\u2019s first season, much like Skins, upended the glossy, sanitised teen TV of the 2010s, giving us something that felt gritty and real. Perhaps now we\u2019re seeking an escape from this. \u201cYou turn on Netflix and it\u2019s, like, One Tree Hill and Gossip Girl. They\u2019re all trending again,\u201d Canadian creator Megan Park recently told Teen Vogue<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This feeling of refuge is enhanced by the fact that phones and social media barely feature in the show, despite the fact that teenagers now average more than eight hours of screen time per day<\/a>. Technology is swapped for the ambient sounds and textures of nature, as well as real-life conversation, with all of its accompanying miscommunications and deceptions.<\/p>\n

If escapism is the brief, then Sterling Point fulfils it expertly. Sure, it doesn\u2019t carry the intensity or the existentialism of its edgier counterparts. But I was surprised by how long I wanted to stay with these characters and inhabit their island bubble. It kept subverting my expectations. I didn\u2019t want to go home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019ll be honest: I was prepared to grit my teeth through Sterling Point, Prime Video\u2019s newest coming-of-age offering,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":728300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-728299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/728300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}