Heartbreak High is a remake of the popular 1990’s version. This was Australia’s competition to Beverly Hills, 90210. Under two decades later from the original, a reboot was released on the 13th September. This review is based on the pilot episode: do we want to watch the rest.

As someone too young to have watched the original, although it is on Netflix, I’ve never got far enough to really form opinions. Expectations aren’t very high when remakes come in and this proves exactly why some things need to be left alone.

Where to start, it’s 100% sex driven and that’s what most of the dialogue is about. Someone writing is definitely obsessed with sex. It’s kind of presented in an uncomfortable way and feels forced upon everyone. Even the actors don’t make this work. It’s another cliche about high school that isn’t as relevant as they think. Not every teen is obsessed with sex, some are, some are asexual. It’s about time this gets represented instead of making assumptions about an entire generations drive.

As someone who watched Sex Education, at least they talked about sex in a way that didn’t make the viewer feel second hand embarrassment plus they rightly represented more than one or two sexualities.

We don’t get very good introductions to characters except Amerie and Harper who were supposedly best friends for life. The only likeable and least annoying character is Quinni because she’s actually very herself, unlike all the others who are pretending to be someone else to fit into the narrative. They’ve over dramatised every character, it’s unnecessary.

You can tell that this isn’t written by anyone whose been to school within the last decade, the references and slang words used are beyond any Gen Z understanding to the point it doesn’t make sense. It is cringe. Clearly someone wanted to be “down with the kids.” The C word seems to be their favourite which is kind of normalising its use, its a pretty heavy word. Research seemed to be a miss. It’s like they looked up popular culture and decided to throw it all in there for effect.

The fashion is very Y2K and also, 90’s inspired which is the one thing the target audience knows. The choice of music is very questionable as it jumps from 2000’s pop and then to modern pop.

It needs to make its mind up on what it wants to be.

3/10 for the pilot.