The “Good Old Days” are Now: Heartstopper, season Two

This blog posts contains some spoilers for Heartstopper season 2.

Those of us who spend time on social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter, often see posts shared by friends and family (as well as total strangers) of a certain age, where they declare that their childhoods were better because they played outside instead of on the computer, or because we spoke to friends face to face instead of on messenger, etc.   They are posted with an air of nostalgia, of course, rather than through any real belief that our childhoods were better – and, it’s fair to say, that to say that they were is total bollocks. 

Who would want to go back to a time where most queer kids would never dream of coming out, knowing full well that they would be beaten each day at school if they did?

Who would want to go back to time where even being suspected of being gay would result in a beating, too? 

Who would want to go back to a time where disabled kids were not properly catered for in the school system and didn’t have the same rights as the rest of us? 

If we look back at our childhoods with a sense of reality rather than through rose-coloured glasses, would anyone really wish them on today’s kids?

And LGBTQ teenagers twenty, thirty, or forty years ago didn’t have anything remotely like Heartstopper, the second season of which dropped on Netflix this week.  The first time I saw anything close to a positive portrayal of male homosexuality on TV was when Beautiful Thing was first shown on Channel 4 somewhere around 1997 or 1998.  I was twenty-four.  Prior to that, most gay characters I saw on screen were dying of AIDS, being murdered, or committing suicide.  

Beautiful Thing (1997)

The BBC did try in the late 1980s with their then-controversial drama Two of Us (see pic, below) – a kind of hour-long Heartstopper of its day, and originally intended to be shown as part of the schools daytime programming of the time.  Around the same time, Section 28 was brought in by the Tory government.  This legislation officially banned “promotion of homosexuality” in schools.  By “promotion” they basically meant “don’t say anything remotely positive about it.”  The BBC got cold feet about Two of Us and pulled the programme, eventually showing it late at night instead when the people it was aimed at would have been in bed – and it was only shown then with a revised ending where the two gay teenagers didn’t get together after all.  Ah yes, the good old days.

Two of Us (BBC, 1987)

LGBTQ teenagers of the time (such as myself) had no-one on TV or film that they could relate to.  If only we’d had a film or a show like Heartstopper to relate to, and to convince us that everything was going to be fine, and that we’d get through whatever life was throwing at us.  I’ve seen criticism of the second season on social media, with people (mostly of my age) saying it is unrealistic because of its lack of sex (or references to sex).  I can only assume their minds have somehow been programmed to think such a thing after enduring the gay-themed indie films of the 1990s onwards, where it was thought that showing full frontal nudity every ten minutes or so was the only way of getting a gay man to sit through a film.   Any adult watching Heartstopper and wanting a sex scene is rather missing the point of the series in the first place.   

Season two continues pretty much where season one left off.  Nick and Charlie are, by and large, happy, and this season follows Nick’s journey through the coming out process – and it’s nice to see that journey depicted as not one “coming out” moment but the realisation that people keep coming out for the rest of their lives.  Also nice is that Nick isn’t forced to come out.  But, as with the first season, there is more going on than that.  Tao and Elle are working through a will they/won’t they relationship.  Tara and Darcy are going through various stresses in their own relationship – although I would like to have seen Darcy’s home life explored more.  The strand focussing on that doesn’t even appear until episode seven.  Perhaps there will be more next season.  Isaac is slowing working out how he fits in (or doesn’t fit in) to the whole relationship thing, and we also get to see more Mr. Ajayi’s personal life, which is really nice, too.   

It is a busy series (and includes a very charming three-episode jaunt to Paris), but none of it seems rushed, with the exception of the Darcy subplot, and, perhaps, the rather strange situation that homophobic rugby player Harry doesn’t make any play after finding out Nick and Charlie an item.  There are some wonderful put-the-arrogant-idiots in their place moments in this series, where Harry, Nick’s brother, and Ben all basically get told where to go – although it would have been interesting to see one of those moments not work out so well for the one putting them in their place. 

But, for the most part, this remains a series about good people doing good things and looking after each other.  It’s still surprising, perhaps, that a series based on that premise has been so welcomed in our cynical times – and that it’s just so damned good.  If there was an Emmy for Most Charming Series, it would win, hands down.   And it shouldn’t be surprising that adults are watching the series and being moved by it, too.   

Heartstopper, season two

Ten years ago, I wrote a novel called Breaking Point, dealing with a pair of teenaged boys who are friends but realise their friendship is becoming something more.  At the same time,  a bully and his friends do what they can to drive them apart.   But I confess that, while I am very proud of Breaking Point and its sequel, Breaking Down (both still available, I might add!!), I’d much rather have written Heartstopper.   There is almost an audaciousness and daring in writing something so simply driven by nice people doing good things.  What other drama series or book series does that?  It’s an utter masterstroke, and so what we need right now as the country continues to tear itself apart.

The writing this season is both sharper and more subtle, and the acting has also improved – although the slightly rough-around-the-edges element to the first season in that regard was rather beguiling.   There are also sequences that appear to be improvised, giving the show such a natural feel, helped by how well the cast clearly gel with each other.  Talking of which, don’t miss the recap of the last season before episode one, which is narrated by the cast as themselves, and is very sweet. 

The reviews for this second season have largely been excellent, although it appears the reviewer in The Independent has a heart of stone.  Perhaps he has forgotten that the show is actually aimed at young teenagers, and not middle-aged men – although there is plenty for adults to enjoy, I might add, including the appearance of Olivia Colman (stunning as always), but also that feeling of watching it and being thankful that today’s kids have Heartstopper instead of Section 28. 

We should never forget how much of a good thing that is.

Grounded in Reality and the Ordinary: The Wonders of Heartstopper

**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.

“Love is the Sweetest Thing” – Heartstopper (TV series review)

It doesn’t seem nearly a decade ago since I was writing Breaking Point, a novel about gay friends being pulled apart by the bullying that they were subjected to. The story switched from telling it from the point of view of the two friends to the bully to the teacher who felt helpless to do something about it. There were sequences in Breaking Point (and the sequel, Breaking Down) that showed some of the joy of teenage love, but the emphasis was on the bullying that they went through, and trying to shed light on the forms it could take.

Netflix’s new teen drama, Heartstopper, dropped on Friday, and I confess I’m utterly jealous of writer Alice Oseman’s ability to tell a not dissimilar story to Breaking Point, but concentrating on the sweet love story rather than the homophobia and bullying that threatens the relationships at the heart of the series. Joe Locke and Kit Connor play Charlie and Nick, who become unlikely friends after being thrown together following changes to form groups at their all-boys high school. Charlie is an out gay teen who, the previous year, had suffered a lengthy period of school bullying, while Nick (a year older than Charlie) is the school’s star rugby player. When their friendship surprisingly turns into something more, their relationship is threatened by their respective friendship groups – and their friendship groups are threatened by their relationship. There are depictions of homophobia and bullying here but, while unpleasant, they are handled in such a way to gain the show a recommendation of viewers of twelve years and over – although, if I was a parent, I would find little here to worry about a younger child seeing. There’s no four-letter words, no sex, no nudity. Just teenagers falling in love.

Despite the bullying and the tensions between friends and the pair at the heart of the story, there’s never a sense of impending doom, or any real feeling of threat to the core relationship. And creating something of that nature is far more difficult than it sounds. It’s far easier to create a serious drama with lots of emotionally explosive scenes than coming up with four hours of television that leaves the viewer with a warm glow for the majority of its running time. Indeed, perhaps “Heartwarming” would be a more apt title than “heartstopper.”

The series has had almost unanimously positive reviews, and is currently at 100% approval on Rotten Tomatoes. Perhaps, after years of political divisions in the UK, where neighbour was almost actively encouraged to fall out with neighbour, and after two years of Coronavirus, there is a yearning for a television series like this, which is largely happy and joyful, and where most of the characters are kind and caring and looking out for each other. Some might find the offering just a bit too nice, and there are times when watching it feels like you are plunging your face into a gateau – but it’s the nicest gateau that you have ever tasted and, no matter how much you consume, you never feel remotely sick or overfull.

I admit I’m not aware of the work of the main cast prior to this series, but it’s so good to see teenagers actually being played by teenagers rather than people approaching thirty. And, even better than that, the cast actually look like real schoolkids rather than models, and none of them sport a six pack. And that’s a great thing considering other shows on Netflix (Elite, Riverdale) which would make you think that four days of the school week is spent in a gym. But the cast is great for the most part, and Olivia Colman unexpectedly pops up in a small role as Nick’s mother, while Stephen Fry says about five lines off-screen as the school’s headmaster. There is also fine writing and performances with regards to the supporting cast, with this inclusive series charting their own relationships, too.

In short, Heartstopper is a delight (and an unexpected one for me, who’d never heard of the web comic it’s based on), and a second series seems inevitable. Going by the reviews so far, and the welcome the series has received on social media, Netflix might well be suffering a substantial boycott if they don’t commission one.

I am so glad that LGBTQ teens today have a series like this available to them, and I know how much difference a series like Heartstopper would have made to my own life had it been around when I was that age. In 1992, we had Section 28. In 2022, teens have Heartstopper. And I’m so pleased for them.