Why Hartley’s reboot, Hearts Alive is so important

If you feel like getting into a time machine and watching adolescence in the 90s, dive into all seven seasons of the excellent series Hartley, raw hearts. Successfully broadcast on France 2, Hartley it was a kind of antithesis of Beverly Hills and his rich children. Middle or poor class and from diverse backgrounds, Drazic, Anita and the others had realistic and easily recognizable problems. 25 years later, we don’t take the same, but we start again.

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Created by Hannah Carroll Chapman and launched September 14 on Netflix, this one restart returns to Hartley High in Sydney and focuses on a handful of teens forced to take sex education classes after a map is discovered on a wall revealing their sexual exploits. One of its leaders, the popular Amerie (Ayesha Madon), of Indo-Australian descent, falls out of favor. At the same time, her best friend Harper (Asher Yasbincek) abruptly rejects her, with no explanation. Devastated by this friendly breakup (which will speak to many of us!), Amerie forges new bonds, with Darren (James Majoos), a racialized, non-binary student, and Quinni, her lesbian best friend. Side lovehas a crush on Dusty (Joshua Heuston), the green-eyed BG, but is not insensitive to a newcomer, Malakai, an indigenous teenager of the Bundjalung people.

Hartley, hearts on fire stands out from the lot of teenage dramas fundamental because it makes of its different representation of adolescence its greatest strength. She might have sounded wrong, but Hannah Carroll Chapman avoids the educational trap with empathic writing. The protagonists exude an authenticity and flaws that make them as human as they are captivating, be they straight, white, racist, queer or neuroatypical. The teenager on the autism spectrum, the touching Quinni, played by Chloe Hayden, also an actress on the spectrum, symbolizes the success of the series. Interested people reacted quickly on social networks.

On TikTok, this user explains that the scene during which Quinni explains her condition to her crush, Sasha (Gemma Chua-Tran) touched her with her realism:

Another applauds the way the series portrays the struggles faced by the lesbian couple:

The relationships between the students are all interesting to decipher, but one of the most surprising remains that between Darren and Ca $ h (Will McDonald), a disadvantaged white teenager. The misunderstanding grows between the two as Ca $ h doesn’t seem sexually attracted to Darren, despite his feelings. Gradually he discovers his asexuality of him.

Dusty and Malakai explore potential bisexuality after a threesome. These lifelike characters – neither angelic nor demonized – open up a refreshing field of possibilities and resonate with an audience that finally recognizes themselves on a screen.

Malakai’s character (Thomas Weatherall) also marks a big step forward for the portrayal of indigenous peoples, victims of systemic racism in Australia. In episode 4, written by indigenous screenwriter Meyne Wyatt, Malakai is a victim of police brutality. The series explores the consequences of this trauma on the young man and his rapprochement with his compatriots. Indigenous actress Sherry-Lee Watson, who plays Missy, talks about the importance of her character:

“I am so excited that young indigenous girls like these can see themselves in an international series. It reaffirms our identity, because it’s so easy to go through that identity crisis when you don’t have access to a good representation on the screen. ”

This new Hartley, raw hearts it didn’t have a lot of media coverage around the world, but the series didn’t need it to be a hit among young people, who cheer it on TikTok, where the #heartbreakhigh topic (its original title) surpassed 200 million views. . In the past two weeks, the series has also topped the Netflix top 10 of the world (33 million cumulative hours viewed). The platform then just renewed it for a season 2. In the midst of canceled series ads with queer content (the yummy restart from strange as folk Where is it The savages), which warms the heart! And from the heart, Hartley do not miss.

Front page view: Hartley, Raw Heart, © Netflix