From ’80s L.a. Rich Kids To A Canadian Mystery, Coming-of-age Sagas Offer Different Strokes

If we are fortunate capable to past into our 20s, and person attained immoderate grade of big consciousness, we each will person lived a coming-of-age story. It’s a powerful, relatable ground for fabrication aliases memoir aliases immoderate operation of nan two. Poignant. Piquant. It mightiness beryllium hilarious aliases depressing or, probably, some astatine once. Stories of first times, of large feelings imperfectly grasped, of life coming into attraction for amended aliases worse. Engaging pinch them arsenic a scholar aliases viewer, we look backmost connected who we were, who we wanted to be, who we wish we hadn’t been. I get a small misty remembering my ain clumsy advancement done that flower-filled minefield. Remind maine ne'er to show you astir it sometime.

Television likes a coming-of-age story, and has logged immoderate awesome ones — “My So-Called Life,” “Never Have I Ever,” “Freaks and Geeks,” “Everybody Hates Chris” — on pinch … immoderate different ones. Premiering Wednesday are 2 bid focusing connected characters successful their precocious teens; while stylistically, and 1 would opportunity morally, miles apart, they nevertheless screen immoderate of nan aforesaid ground. There are things you can’t debar increasing up, wherever your life is set.

A rich-kids play pinch a broadside of serial execution group successful 1981 Los Angeles, FX‘s “The Shards” plants itself astatine nan intersection of Bret Easton Ellis, whose 2023 “autofictional” novel it’s based on, and co-creator Ryan Murphy, successful 1 of his bloodier moods, amplifying each other’s sensation for nan sensational and surfaces. Set connected a reservoir successful Canada, Prime Video’s “Sterling Point,” from Megan Park (“My Old Ass”), unrolls for illustration a leisurely indie film; location will not beryllium blood.

Kaia Gerber, from left, Igby Rigney, Hayes Warner, Homer Gere and Graham Campbell successful FX’s “The Shards.”

(FX)

Igby Rigney plays Ellis successful “The Shards,” narrating from nan future. Bret shares pinch his authorial namesake an avocation and a emotion for Joan Didion (“Like each aspiring writers of my generation, I wanted to constitute for illustration Didion. With restraint, system and full control. If one could constitute for illustration that, I could beryllium for illustration that. Or truthful I thought.”), arsenic good arsenic a manuscript titled “Less Than Zero,” though present it’s a surface curen alternatively than nan 1985 caller that made nan writer celebrated astatine 21. (One characteristic will telephone it “brilliant.”)

As did Real Bret Ellis, TV Bret Ellis attends nan backstage Buckley School successful Sherman Oaks, wherever he is 1 successful a mini clique of rich, beautiful cool kids: Susan Reynolds (Kaia Gerber, girl of Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber) and Debbie Schaffer (Hayes Warner) successful contrasting shades of Veronica and Betty; and Susan’s jock boyfriend, Thom (Graham Campbell). Debbie is Bret’s girlfriend, though he is besides actively, if secretly gay, and has a benignant of point for Susan. They are shallow, if sad, nostalgic for their ain untrammeled youth; they still person a small innocence near to lose. Because Bret is benignant to marginal characters, beneath nan announcement of his friends, from whom he mentally distances himself by kindness of watching them (he’s Nick Carraway successful Wayfarers), he sounds arsenic somewhat much sympathetic, if nary little tedious, and perchance much problematic. “I told myself I was only going to chronicle nan decadence,” says narrator Bret, “an excuse I’d return to galore times successful my career.”

Into this shakily ordered beingness comes handsome, charismatic, mysterious caller kid Robert Mallory (Homer Gere, boy of Richard, pinch Carey Lowell), whom Bret remembers seeing astatine a screening of “The Shining” a twelvemonth before, though Robert denies having been there. Soon he has formed a spell complete Bret’s friends, stirring successful Bret copy feelings of obsession and competition: “I smelled him earlier I saw him — it was cedar and sandalwood arsenic if he had conscionable walked done a wood of citrus,” but also, “He was up to thing and it was up to maine to find retired precisely what that was.”

Around nan aforesaid clip that Robert arrives, a serial killer, yet dubbed nan Trawler, comes to town. (Happily, we spot only nan elaborately staged, perchance satanic results of their work, not nan process.) Who this personification is, and what little than random reasons mightiness explicate nan murders, remains a enigma astatine slightest done nan 9 retired of 10 episodes disposable to review. But Bret points a digit truthful often astatine Robert that, by nan mathematics of tv drama, 1 tin only judge him innocent. Still, nary idea.

It’s a world from which adults are almost wholly missing, and erstwhile they are not, they are disappointing, aliases trouble. Significantly, location are Wes Bentley arsenic Debbie’s skeezy movie shaper begetter and Evan Rachel Wood arsenic Debbie’s mother, a narcotized grounded character consecutive retired of “Valley of nan Dolls.” Jordan Roth plays Bentley’s somewhat sinister, sometimes adjuvant correct manus kitted retired post-glam Bowie style.

To beryllium perfectly honest, if 1 group retired to create a show I would beryllium constitutionally disposed not to attraction for, this is it, though I let that this is besides precisely a show immoderate group would beryllium calved to love. It’s often absurd and ever melodramatic — not successful itself a disapproval — but if you’re successful nan marketplace for a slick miniseries astir cocaine-sniffing kids (and adults), murder, animal mutilation, activity and sports cars successful New Wave L.A., pinch cameos from Hamburger Hamlet and Orange Julius and an fantabulous action of play songs connected nan soundtrack, you can’t do amended than this.

Ella Rubin, left, and Bo Bragason successful Prime Video’s “Sterling Point.”

(Sabrina Lantos / Prime Video)

“Sterling Point,” connected nan different hand, is conscionable my cup of Canadian Maple Syrup Soda. (It’s a thing.)

Ella Rubin plays Annie Jacobson, and for illustration nan kids successful “The Shards,” we meet her suspended betwixt her inferior and elder years of precocious school, facing a summertime she had planned to capable pinch much school. “You’re 17,” says her knuckleheaded, yet strangely perceptive copy relative Connor (Keen Ruffalo, boy of Mark), “you enactment for illustration you’re 30,” suggesting alternatively a play of “just going bug wild.”

Then a missive from a lawyer arrives, and it transpires that their maternal grandfather, whom they ne'er knew, has near them, among different things, an land successful Ontario’s Muskoka Lakes district. (Their mother died erstwhile nan twins were 2.) Annie leaves their begetter (Jay Duplass) a misdirecting Post-It statement — she knows he’s been lying to her astir her grandfather — and scurries disconnected to pierce nan bosom of this mystery, which comes from an incomplete instruction to “find her.” (She’s a rich | girl. Scurrying from New York to agrarian Canada doesn’t require a 2nd thought.)

Arriving by seaplane, Annie meets Ellis (Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie), a townie moving for Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s marina owner, Joe, who carries himself for illustration a man pinch a secret. Ellis, a saccharine feline not averse to skimming a small disconnected nan apical erstwhile dealing pinch moneyed customers — it’s a summertime getaway for nan rich | — takes an contiguous radiance to Annie. This will beryllium analyzable by nan coincidental quality of Rory (Daniel Quinn-Toye), a erstwhile soft prodigy Annie knows from New York, who’s successful residence pinch his mother (Missi Pyle, ever a dainty to see), who ever seems conscionable a small spot drunk and thinks thing of pouring 1 retired for nan kids. (Adult beingness is minimal.) There are posh parties, done which immoderate of nan young characters pass, though nary 1 is doing cocaine aliases getting murdered. (There is cookware and underage drinking.)

The unit is filled retired by Oona (Bo Bragason), a benignant of seafaring vagabond who lives connected a vessel pinch her 12-year-old sister Maple (Mabel Strachan), and Ramona (Amélie Hoeferle, terrific) an angry section returning aft immoderate clip away, and perchance presenting nan reply to a riddle.

What makes “Sterling Point” activity truthful beautifully is its rare, real, unhurried consciousness of of time; it stretches retired nan measurement days do erstwhile you’re young, a consciousness heightened by nan truth that Annie speaks doubly arsenic accelerated and arsenic overmuch arsenic anyone other successful nan series. (It’s that New York energy.) Though location are immoderate low-key melodramatic crippled points, nan show feels diaristic. It isn’t that nan stakes are low, aliases that conflict is nonexistent, but that nan play is driven by issues of connection, identity, emotion and longing. (As successful “The Shards,” there’s a segment successful which personification who likes personification discovers them liking personification other — but who hasn’t been there.)

The bid emanates a consciousness of urgency without cooking up abnormally melodramatic situations. There is simply a batch of conversation, which, indeed, is what takes up a ample information of teenage life. One couldn’t precisely telephone “Sterling Point” unglamorous, since this is an charismatic greenish and bluish world — each that h2o makes nan show refreshing to watch successful a power activity — and nan formed is good-looking, successful absorbing ways, chosen, I would guess, not for perfection but for soulfulness. Who wouldn’t want to unrecorded here?