Canada, the mid-1990s. Teenagers Tegan and Sara are identical twins who live in suburbia with their mom and her boyfriend. Formerly very close, the sisters are going through a rocky period in their relationship. They've just moved to a new school where they don't know anyone, and Tegan feels like Sara is deliberately pushing her away. This has been going on all summer, in fact, with Sara monopolising all the available time with their mutual friend, Phoebe.
Sara, for her part, is struggling with the complex feelings arising from the fact that she and Phoebe are secretly in the throes of a typically intense first love. Sara is happy to have found love, of course, but this is lower middle class suburbia in the 1990s: far from a welcoming environment for same sex romance. She's terrified about the reaction of her own family, or of Phoebe's family, if their relationship were to become known.
Of course, if Sara ever shared her secret with Tegan, she might find her sister understands her sexuality much better than she realises!
As both of the sisters struggle to find and express their identities, they forge new friendships, act out in unproductive ways, make plenty of mistakes ... and inadvertently stumble into a new passion when they discover a guitar that belongs to their mother's boyfriend.
High School is a coming of age story of identical twin queer teens in 1990s Canada. It follows a fictionalised narrative, but takes as its starting point the real life memoir of pop duo Tegan & Sara, who are perhaps best known for "Everything is Awesome" from the Lego Movie.
The show got off to a slowish start, with the first episode leaving me on the fence as to how much I was enjoying it, but by the end of the second episode I was fully on board. I've now got my fingers crossed that they get another season.
High School makes an audacious choice with its lead actors. Real life identical twins Railey and Seazynn Gilliland had no formal training as either actors or singers, winning consideration for the role on the strength of their personalities and camaraderie on Railey's TikTok channel. Both young women give very credible performances. They're better actors than singers, right now, but I think that's entirely reasonable for this season given that the episodes cover their first explorations of music.
The show's supporting cast is also very good. Cobie Smulders is by far the most recognisable face on the show, but there is plenty of talent among the younger, lesser known performers. I'm sure we will see some of them become much more high profile as their careers develop.
All these good performances would of course mean little if the show failed to develop an engaging narrative. Fortunately, there's nothing to worry about on that front. The writing carefully balances the need to make the leads both flawed but likeable, handling that difficult task with skill and humour. Both Tegan and Sara come across as basically decent young people who on the whole have good intentions, even if they sometimes express themselves in selfish or counter-productive ways. Their teenage angst and spikiness is understandable and empathetic, explaining but not excusing the poor decisions they sometimes make.
Well-written, well performed, well worth your time.
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