STERLING POINT
- Prime Video
The folks at Prime Video sure do like a young adult series set in the North American summer.
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The most famous, of course, being The Summer I Turned Pretty, but there's also this year's Every Year After and the brand new Sterling Point.
The new series, from director/creator Megan Park (My Old Ass, The Fallout), is set in the titular fictional Canadian lakeside town and follows a bunch of teens figuring themselves out while their fairly useless parents either aren't around or let them down.
Annie Jacobson (Ella Rubin, The Idea of You) is our main character, a New York soon-to-be 18-year-old with the weight of the world on her shoulders - a stark difference to her twin brother Connor (Keen Ruffalo, son of Mark), who floats through life with few obstacles and a laidback attitude. With all the worries and responsibilities of a 30-year-old, she's thrown for a loop when she doesn't get into the business program she anticipated taking up her summer. But this concern is relegated to the backburner when the Jacobson siblings receive news that their maternal grandfather has died and left them property in Sterling Point.
This revelation is a massive shock, as the twins were unaware they even had a living grandfather. Their mum died when they were just toddlers, and their father Steven (Jay Duplass, Dying for Sex) has never mentioned a living grandfather, let alone one with property to bequeath.
Determined to find out more about her family connection to the island, Annie tells her dad she's headed to Thailand with her boyfriend (who she's staying with until he's ready to come out as gay, despite everybody already knowing) but instead sets off north.
Clearly well out of her element in the remote, relatively disconnected Sterling Point, Annie soon makes friends with a group of local teens including Oona (Bo Bragason), Ellis (Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie) and Ramona (Amélie Hoeferle).
Ellis's dad Joe (Jeffrey Dean Morgan, The Walking Dead) runs the marina, and Ellis and the others work in town, giving boat rides, taking care of wealthy visitors' boats and sheds, and picking up catering gigs. They all take a shine to Annie and she is welcomed into the crew with open arms.
Annie soon finds that life in Sterling Point feels more real than life in New York ever did, and she grows to love the people she meets fiercely.
But it's not all rosy on the island - she finds out some new family secret or revelation every other day, shattering her perception of who her parents were and how her life will look going forward.
Eventually both Connor and Steven join Annie in town, laying the platform for more drama to unfold.
Rubin is an eminently watchable lead, with a charm and easy acting style that recalls Julia Roberts and Anne Hathaway. She's given a lot to work with across the eight episodes of this season, and she's more than up to the task.
Ruffalo is a fun support player, bringing a lot of levity and fun moments.
Sterling Point, like many series on Prime, has a soundtrack filled with trendy tunes and throwback gems. It kicks things off strong with Olivia Rodrigo's Maggots for Brains in the opening minutes, while episode seven brings in lovely folk song Rain, by Patty Griffin, for a particularly moving sequence.
If audiences connect with this series as strongly as the likes of Off Campus or The Summer I Turned Pretty, then there's a good chance Patty Griffin will be in for an avalanche of new streams.
The finale sets Sterling Point up for a second season, but if that never comes fans won't feel too short-changed, as it doesn't end on a cliffhanger.
Some great work has been done on character building in this first season, so hopefully we'll get to grow with the characters over future seasons.
ALSO STREAMING
After three years off the air, perennially positive and deceptively deep soccer comedy series Ted Lasso is back on Apple TV. Creator and star Jason Sudeikis thought he was done with the series after 2023's third season wrapped up, but found he had more stories to tell in season four. This time around Ted is still with Richmond FC, but he's not in charge of the men's team - he's coaching the second division women's side. Most of the cast returns, including Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple and of course Brendan Hunt as Coach Beard, while Tanya Reynolds (The Other Bennet Sister), Faye Marsay (Game of Thrones) and Abbie Hern (My Lady Jayne) join the team. Episodes will arrive weekly. Also on Apple TV is Snoopy Presents: There's No Place Like Home, Snoopy, a 30-minute animated special from the Peanuts crew.
Over on Netflix you'll find The Bombing of Pan Am 103, a drama series examining the investigation into the Lockerbie disaster. The same event was explored in Colin Firth series Lockerbie: A Search for Truth last year. The new series stars Connor Swindells (Sex Education), Merritt Wever (Godless) and Patrick J. Adams (Suits). All six episodes are dropping at once. The streamer also has something significantly lighter in tone - Let's Marry Harry, a new reality series attempting to find Aussie Too Hot to Handle star Harry Jowsey a wife. The series kicks off with seven episodes, followed by a one-episode finale the following week.
Elsewhere you can catch Thailand-set shark thriller film The Devil's Mouth, starring Kathryn Newton, Lana Condor and Gavin Casalegno, over on Prime Video; the third season of Taylor Sheridan's special forces action series Lioness, starring Zoe Saldana, Nicole Kidman and Morgan Freeman, on Paramount+; new Ryan Murphy series The Shards, starring Kaia Gerber and Homer Gere (son of Richard), on Disney+; and 50 Cent-produced crime drama Fightland on Stan.
