Summary
The script, followed by great acting, makes High School much more than another high school drama.
This review of the Amazon Freevee series High School season 1 does not contain spoilers.
The Amazon Freevee Original series High School tells the tale of two sisters, Tegan and Sara. The highs and lows of moving to a new city, adapting to their high school, and attempting to find their own relationships. The series is based on the autobiographical book High School.
As the series begins, we get a great introduction to the sisters and how different but the same they are. You have two young punk rock-ish sisters who are reserved yet looking to find themselves at this critical junction of their lives. However, as they both start to find themselves, they begin to distance themselves from each other, affecting both sisters at different times.
Heading into the series, I didn’t know much about the book or what the series would be about. Outside it looked like another high school drama. Another thing I wasn’t aware of until doing my research was that our two leads, Railey and Seazynn Gilliland, came from the world of TikTok. And to be completely honest, when you watch the series, it’s like watching two people who have been doing this for quite a while.
From the moment the series begins, the Gilliland sisters do a great job of selling the characters of Tegan and Sara Quin to the point that you automatically care about their journey. When you peel back each layer of the sisters, you find yourself relating to some of the teenage angst that we all went through. I applaud the sisters for incredible work on the series and can only see things going up for the duo.
While the sisters were stars, my goodness Cobie Smulders stole my heart in more than one way. With the somewhat inexperienced cast, it was brilliant to find someone with the right amount of experience to be at the head of the table. Smulders played Tegan and Sara’s mother, Simone, who is trying to find herself while attempting to work, live and be a parent throughout the series. She was downright brilliant in the role and carried so much of the emotional brunt of the series.
Overall, I had a good time with the series. The writers did a great job of not making it feel like your prototypical high school drama that we are used to seeing. You can see there was a ton of effort to make this feel authentic and relatable enough to make us, the viewer connect with the story. I would definitely recommend checking the series out.
What did you think of High School season 1? Comment below.
