**Please note that this post includes spoilers of both Heartstopper and Love, Victor.**
Netflix’s Heartstopper continues to flummox me somewhat, not least because it’s a series I’m now watching for the second time in three months, and I rarely watch any TV series twice, even years after the first viewing.
I have been watching, trying to work out quite how and why it is so effective even on curmudgeonly old fogeys like me, and the only reason I can come up with is because it’s so unlike what we have come to expect in coming out and coming-of-age film and television. Last time I wrote about it, I pointed out that the age of the actors in the series was key, and I still believe that. We are so used to seeing American shows where the teenagers are played by 25-year-olds that it almost comes as a shock when we see teenagers playing people of their own age.
But we do at least have history of that in the UK, particularly with coming out narratives. After all, when Beautiful Thing was released in 1996, both of the lead actors were eighteen years old, and they were seventeen when it was filmed. Likewise, Ben Silverstone was nineteen when Get Real (1999) was filmed (although Brad Gorton was close to twenty-five). Both are wholly recommended if you liked Heartstopper, by the way. Likewise, much of the cast of TV series Grange Hill were still school age when they started in the show.
So, the fact that Kit Connor and Joe Locke were both seventeen when Heartstopper was filmed is perhaps less surprising when put into that particularly British context. However, it’s a key point, as the schoolkids actually look like schoolkids – a far cry from, say, Riverdale where the cast are at least five years older than their characters, all have model good looks, and most of the male characters sport a six pack, which in itself is an issue, I think, although that is for another post.
While we’re on subject of the cast, I’m not going to single out individuals for praise here, partly because this isn’t that kind of post, but also because the cast works so well as a whole. But one thing that does need to be said here is the way the actors have handled themselves following the release of the series. They seem to be fully aware of the important position they are now in as role models for the gay teenage community, and the images and videos of them engaging with fans and taking part in the Pride march in London last week (and showing a man giving a hate speech exactly what they thought of him) were strangely moving.
The other important thing about Heartstopper is its “ordinariness.” And I don’t mean to use that word in a derogatory sense. Quite the opposite, in fact. The dialogue is straightforward, even mundane. This isn’t great writing in the traditional sense, but it’s downright daring in its willingness to embrace the banality of our everyday conversations. The characters seem to spend half the time saying “hi” and “hey” – there are none of the big, long semi-philosophical speeches coming from the characters in US equivalents. Who can forget that the characters in Dawson’s Creek had spent their time swallowing a thesaurus and giving what were approaching profound monologues? No fear of that here. The vocabulary in Heartstopper is about as simple as it gets. But that is the point. It is grounded in a reality that we all know. Teenagers don’t talk like Dawson & Co, or like the characters in 13 Reasons Why, for example.
The acting is also low-key, and intentionally so. There are no histrionics, no playing to camera. No big “moments.” Trying to come across as natural is key to the show’s success. And this is tied up in the narrative itself.
I was rather chastised on social media recently for pointing out the soap opera-like action of Love, Victor, which has just dropped its final season. The action of all three seasons combined takes place over a period of twelve months. But, in that series, we have Victor who is gay but he goes out with a girl, and then falls in love with Benji and so breaks up with girl to be with Benji in the first season. In subsequent seasons, Victor gets tempted by a second boy, rejects him and goes back with Benji, and then Benji has to reject Victor, and so Victor miraculously comes across a THIRD boy and they have a steamy fling, before he rejects him and goes back to Benji, and then back with the third boy again, and finally back with Benji. In twelve months. And that’s just the central characters.
Compare that to the first season of Heartstopper: Boy meets boy, boy falls for boy, they fall in love and end up in a stable relationship. While there are threats to their union in these eight episodes, none of them are ever serious, just little bumps along the road. We know from the start it’s all going to be OK. Likewise, the subplots featuring other characters are not heavy or dramatic in the traditional sense. It’s not that type of show. If other teen shows are concentrating on drama, this one is concentrating on representing the real, and that is what makes it special.
This is also clearly an attempt at showing us what life is like for many (although not all) gay teenagers in 2022, and I have lost count of the amount of times that I have read older viewers saying “I wish this had been around when I was that age.” Yes, I’ve said that, too. But the truth is that it couldn’t have been made then, because that wasn’t our reality. I knew of no openly gay kids at school, and we’d have been beaten to a pulp if we had been out. But that was thirty years ago. Geez, I’m getting old. And I think the changes have actually been quite recent. I wrote a couple of books for young adults a number of years ago (Breaking Point and Breaking Down) and felt that they were realistic. Now, I look back and find they are very much of their time and probably don’t represent reality today. And the first book was first published in 2015. I inadvertently wrote a period piece! That said, Heartstopper certainly doesn’t shy away from the fact that homophobia still exists in our schools, although much of the bullying takes place before the events in the first season – and this, again, provides us with something new: What happens after the crap coming out period?
So, in a roundabout way, I’m saying that Heartstopper is special because it concentrates on the ordinary. I would love to know if this was the intention when it was being written and filmed. Was that naturalness encouraged or just instilled into the series from the beginning? Perhaps we’ll find out from the cast and crew at some point in the future. A detailed interview about how the natural style came about and was encouraged would be wonderful to hear – or, indeed, conduct! Who knows, maybe a journal article in the future.
Presumably, there is only a limited number of seasons that the series can go on for – unless the story continues at university – and so the three guaranteed seasons we know about may well be all we get of Heartstopper. It probably doesn’t matter, because it will leave its mark on the world of LGBTQ-themed television – maybe for decades to come. It is a series that has hit the reset button not just on how these kinds of issues are dealt with in television drama, but also the reset button in the direction of all television teen dramas in the future. For a series so keen on concentrating on the ordinary, that’s pretty special.
Beyond Boundaries 