Everyone is obsessed with the series Sterling Point
(and we understand why)
Sometimes you start a series because you hear everywhere on the internet that it’s amazing. You don’t expect too much right away, because how often have you been disappointed by a series that TikTok claimed would ‘change your life’? Exactly. Still, I decided to Sterling Point give it a chance. One episode couldn’t hurt. Two, by the way, neither. And before I knew it, it was suddenly the middle of the night and I was becoming emotionally involved in the love problems and family secrets of a group of fictional teenagers on a Canadian island.
The whole internet is currently talking about Sterling Point and now I understand why. This could very well be a cult series in the making. The kind where we’ll still be watching edits of in a few years and where people seriously discuss which character they are rooting for. Are you getting flashbacks to the time when you had to choose between Team Edward and Team Jacob? Great, because this series also has a love triangle that we can completely lose ourselves in.
What is Sterling Point about?
In Sterling Point we follow seventeen-year-old Annie Jacobson, played by Ella Rubin. Annie lives in New York and is quite a type A. She loves planning, knows exactly what she wants to do with her future, and has mapped out her summer completely. At least, that’s what she thinks. When she is rejected for a prestigious business program, her perfectly planned summer suddenly falls apart. Then she also hears that her estranged grandfather has passed away. She never met the man, but he left her and her twin brother Connor something quite significant: an island in Canada. Yes, a whole island. Why would a stranger grandfather leave something like that to his grandchildren? And why does their father want to tell so little about him and about the past of their deceased mother? Annie doesn’t trust it and decides to investigate herself.
Without telling her father where she is really going, she departs for Sterling Point. The island is located in the Canadian Muskoka region and looks like the place where you would want to spend the whole summer. Think of wooden cabins by the water, long docks, boats, and evenings where everyone sits outside together. No one seems to be in a hurry, and because there is hardly any reception, no one is constantly on their phone either. A dream, then. Once arrived, Annie meets a group of young people with whom she will spend the summer and with whom she finally becomes a bit more relaxed. She meets the flirty Oona, Ellis, a boy who lives on the island, and the wealthy New Yorker Rory, who comes to Sterling Point in the summer.
You can already feel the storm brewing: both Ellis and Rory find Annie interesting. One is a hard-working boy from the island, and the other comes from the same wealthy New York world as she does. So yes, the Team Ellis and Team Rory discussions can officially begin. Or is this series secretly more of a sister drama than a love triangle? Because Sterling Point is much more than a love story a la The Summer I Turned Pretty. Annie discovers that her family history is more complicated than previously thought. Together with her brother, she tries to uncover which secrets their father and the previous generation have always hidden.
@ieucooke CLOCK IN PEOPLE I NEED TO DISCUSS IT WITH SOMEONE #sterlingpoint #show #whattowatch
Finally, teenagers are talking like real teenagers again
What this series does particularly well is that the characters don’t feel like adults who just happen to be in high school. They actually talk, dress, and behave like young people. They make jokes about attachment styles, wear jorts, bandanas, and silver rings, and meanwhile try to figure out who they are and who they are attracted to. Their sexuality is also not automatically turned into a big and heavy problem. It’s just there. You probably know those series where a writer tries very hard to show that they understand the language of Gen Z. Every character shouts ‘slay’, ‘it’s giving’, or something else that went viral six months ago every three lines. In Sterling Point this doesn’t happen, fortunately. You don’t get the feeling that the actors are neatly waiting for their turn to say a perfect one-liner, but rather that you’ve secretly joined a real friend group.
This does Sterling Point better than other YA series
Of course, the series contains enough familiar YA ingredients. There are family secrets, summer loves, unrequited feelings, attractive people, and parents who are notably often absent. Yet it doesn’t feel like all the standard clichés have been shuffled together again. That probably has a lot to do with creator Megan Park, who previously My Old Ass and The Fallout made. The creators of Gossip Girl also worked as executive producers.
Where series like Euphoria have become darker, heavier, and more violent in recent years, Sterling Point chooses warmth. The characters have real problems, but you’re not constantly on edge waiting for something terrible to happen to someone. Even phones hardly play a role, as there is barely any reception on the island. Instead of endless app conversations, the characters look at each other, talk on a boat, and fall in love during real conversations. Add a beautiful island, a delightful family secret, and a love triangle to that, and you have the perfect series to binge in one weekend. All eight episodes are now available on Prime Video. We warn you in advance: once you arrive at Sterling Point, you won’t want to leave anytime soon.
