Kat and Bianca Stratford have just moved from Ohio to California. As they start at their new school, Padua High, they have very different goals. Kat is a cool, smart, strong-willed, forthright feminist who is looking to save the world and get out of school as fast as she can. Bianca meanwhile just wants to fit in, preferably including becoming a cheerleader.
Both the sisters will of course meet handsome young men, with whom tentative friendship - and maybe more - begins to bloom. This is a particularly fraught issue for Kat and Bianca though, as their widowed father is wildly over-protective.
Most flawed of all the characters is Kat and Bianca's father. While the show plays his policing of their personal lives and their bodies for laughs, it is frankly rather gross. On a related note to this: the early episodes often have at least one instance of going for a cheap and lazy gag at the expense of marginalised groups, like the guy claiming "my doctor says I identify as female" used as an excuse to be a peeping tom. That's punching down, and it is something that good comedy doesn't do. Thankfully, this tones down a bit over time.
I thoroughly loathe Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, but I quite enjoyed its significantly more pleasant 1999 film adaptation, 10 Things I Hate About You. This review, however, is not about that film, but about the TV show it inspired 10 years later.
So how is it? Overall, not bad. It's definitely helped a lot by the likeable cast, who do a good job of making you like their characters despite them all being very flawed people. For instance, Kat is overly proud and tends to be dismissive of others, while Bianca's obsession with being popular causes her to act in very selfish ways at times. Their potential love interests are just as flawed. Patrick, Kat's moody possible paramour, has serious issues with expressing his emotions, while Bianca's friend Cameron is deep in 'nice guy' self-deception, which is why she spends most of the season oblivious to his interest, and also why she rightly feels deceived when it is finally revealed. Guys: use your words. And accept 'no' gracefully.
Most flawed of all the characters is Kat and Bianca's father. While the show plays his policing of their personal lives and their bodies for laughs, it is frankly rather gross. On a related note to this: the early episodes often have at least one instance of going for a cheap and lazy gag at the expense of marginalised groups, like the guy claiming "my doctor says I identify as female" used as an excuse to be a peeping tom. That's punching down, and it is something that good comedy doesn't do. Thankfully, this tones down a bit over time.
Thankfully, despite the characters flaws, the show does a solid job of portraying that most of them - the peeping tom and a couple of others aside - are generally trying to be decent people. They may not always succeed, but they try. Plus, like I said before, the cast are very likeable. That definitely helps!
At the end of the day, each 22 minute episode of this series was an easy watch, and I liked that the TV format allowed for more drawn out development of the 'core' romances. However, I'm not sure that the TV show offers a huge enhancement over the film. Perhaps if it had been given a second season it would have really come into its own - though I do wonder how many seasons the concept could really have sustained. In the event, however, it got cancelled at the end of its first season (even if Disney+ claims it has two; it's actually one season that was aired in two blocks). The series therefore ends on a bunch of unresolved cliffhangers. There is an interview with the creator online, where he reveals the plans for if they'd been renewed, but the lack of a 'real' ending may put this in the 'nope' column for some viewers.
And I don't think they'd be missing all that much for making such a decision. This show was a decent time-filler, but it was not especially memorable.
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