If you’re reading this, you’ve more than likely heard the news: Amazon Prime’s , the college hockey romance which pulled in 36 million viewers worldwide in just 12 days upon release, is coming back for a second season… and sooner than we thought. Indeed, on 28 April 2027, we’ll be returning to Briar University, this time to primarily follow the romance of Allie (Mika Abdalla) and ice hockey player Dean (Stephen Kalyn), who spent season one in a “friends with benefits” situation that started to feel serious.
But while we can hardly wait for season two, the show is not exactly in groundbreaking territory. Teen dramas have been pillars of the pop culture community for decades. Even before ’90s game-changer , there were shows like . And millennials were practically raised on the holy trinity of , The OC and . All of which is to say, if you’re hankering for another teen comfort show to eat your dinner with, there’s so much to choose from.
Here are the best (actually good) teen dramas to fill your red solo cup and tide you over until season two drops.
The OC
Ryan Atwood (Ben McKenzie) reinvented the white tank top for an entire generation when he arrived in Orange County – from the wrong side of the tracks, of course – to befriend Adam Brody’s nerdy Seth Cohen in season one of Josh Schwartz’s 2003 rich-kid drama, The OC. The show gave us Mischa Barton, it gave us Rachel Bilson, it gave us Brody – it gave us Jim from cropping up in yet another Hollywood role. For millennials, The OC will always be the ultimate teen drama, and will forever be responsible for our inability to listen to Imogen Heap’s cover of “Hallelujah”. We’re trauma-bonded by the season three finale, you see.
The Summer I Turned Pretty
Who could have possibly imagined the cultural reset a show about a girl called Belly would provide? But The Summer I Turned Pretty, created by author Jenny Han and released in 2022, certainly changed this decade’s teen drama game. Lola Tung is the gentle Belly who finds herself torn between two, let’s face it, incredibly hot brothers: Jeremiah and Conrad Fisher (played by Gavin Casalegno and Christopher Briney, respectively). What a terrible conundrum to find oneself in, and one which takes Belly three whole seasons to figure out, which brought us to the stomach-churning finale earlier this year (watched by a staggering 70 million viewers in its first 70 days). Now, a feature-length film awaits, which the cast has already been spotted filming.
If you’re of a certain age, you might have seen this Aussie high school drama the first time around in the ’90s (in which case, you probably had a poster of Drazic on your wall) – but there’s a genuinely good Netflix reboot which launched in 2022 and is currently on its third season. Expect plentiful chaos, a banging soundtrack and genuine teen issues broached: in the first season students are placed on a “sexual literacy tutorial (which they call “SLUTS”) after a diagram of who’s slept with who is graffitied on the wall. Oh and there’s an crossover: Josh Heuston, who plays Hannah’s crush Justin, appears as Dusty.
Production has just begun on the fourth and final season of , an incredibly addictive thriller series which has a bit of something for everyone. There’s a rather harrowing flashback storyline which follows a group of teenagers as they fight to survive in the wilderness after a plane crash in 1996. The parallel storyline takes place 25 years later, as the remaining survivors attempt to piece their lives back together. There’s a power cast here, too: Christina Ricci, Melanie Lynskey and Juliette Lewis all star, and – – Molly Ringwald has been signed up for the final season.
It’s a throwback, but one which is certainly worth committing to if you haven’t yet devoured all 121 episodes, spread over six seasons. launched the career of Blake Lively, who plays Serena van der Woodsen, after all. The premise is: rich New York private schoolers, specifically from the Upper East Side, battle it out for love and status whilst dressed in head-to-toe Marc Jacobs and saying things like, “Whoever said money doesn’t buy happiness doesn’t know where to shop.” has Garrett and Justin, has Nate and Chuck, and your allegiance to either is tested harder than your belief that this 20-something cast are really high school age.
One of the best new comedies of recent years, is the semi-fictionalised experience of social media star Benito Skinner, who found himself at a jock-heavy university in the Noughties. There are a thousand millennial pop culture references (look out for the “Super Bass” rap), which provide a backdrop to poignant themes of sexuality and self-discovery. The cast of the A24-produced series is exceptional, with Mary-Beth Barone as Benny’s sister, and Wally Baram as his fake-girlfriend-turned gay-best-friend, Carmen. It will transport you right back to the early days of Instagram, with its cringey captions (“here’s to nights we won’t remember with friends we’ll never forget”) and awkward selfies. It’s so perfect you’ll almost miss dabbing.
If there was a recent teen drama that could at all rival , it’d be its cooler, younger sister , about a couple of 17-year-old siblings – Annie (Ella Rubin) and Connor (Keen Ruffalo) – who inherit an entire island in Muskoka, Canada. They spend the summer getting to know the residents – navigating romances, forming close bonds, jumping into lakes, swishing their amazing hair around – and ultimately, as with all coming-of-age dramas worth their salt, finding themselves. There’s something a bit throwback about also in the sense that it’s like but with Gen Zs having conversations about their feelings and reading The Body Keeps The Score.
