What we’re watching over the summer

Writers from the Boar come together to give you their recommendation for what you should be watching this summer.

Dance Academy (2010-2013)

‘What the hell is Dance Academy?’ I hear you ask. In short, it’s an Australian TV show about teenagers attending a competitive and gruelling ballet school, the perfect combination of bubble-gum teen angst, fantastic dance moves and some genuinely moving storytelling. I discovered this show whilst trawling Netflix one afternoon, and was hooked almost straightaway. With its mix of humour, teen angst and dance, this is the perfect show to be watching over summer.

The story starts as fresh-faced farm girl Tara Webster (Xenia Goodwin) travels to Sydney to audition for the National Academy of Dance. Dance Academy seems to have all the clichés of your typical teen high school drama – Abigail, the manipulative Queen Bee who is jealous of the protagonists’ talent (Dena Kaplan) and Ethan (Tim Pocock) the dreamy guy Tara instantly starts crushing on. But as the series progresses, the writers deconstruct the clichés and create surprisingly empathetic and well-rounded characters. This is helped by some very strong performances from the young cast (particularly impressive as most of them had received no formal acting training prior to filming). So crack out your Netflix account and prepare to get hooked on the rivalries, heart breaks and triumphs of a group of dysfunctional dancers.

All 3 seasons are available on DVD and Netflix.

Emily Nabney

The Crimson Field (2014)

Originally called The Ark, The Crimson Field is a BBC miniseries set in the Great War that aired earlier this year. What sets it apart from other period dramas of the same era is the fact that it is set on a field-hospital in France rather than on the front-line or the home-front. As a result, we are able to perceive the events of the war in a very different manner.

More often than not, the star of our favourite period drama is a handsome, dark and brooding man with a dark past. This is not quite the case with The Crimson Field. The star, Kitty Trevelyan, is instead a rather troubled volunteer nurse. She doesn’t care about following rules, and is the type of character who smokes cigarettes in the depths of night. Furthermore, we see the typical ‘one hero and two heroines’ love triangle become inverted as two captains become quite taken with her.

Another key element of the series is the way in which it depicts life as a soldier in the war. At times, I was reminded of the powerful poetry of Siegfried Sassoon. For instance, one soldier has become mentally ill due to the strain of war: does this count as an ‘injury’ if he has no physical scars?

Flora Marshall, a spoilt but kind-hearted nurse, provides us with an element of comic relief from the bleaker elements of the show. We witness her adventure from a naive nurse to a stronger individual.

I urge you to use the summer vacation to celebrate the one-hundred year anniversary of World War One and watch The Crimson Field.

Sandeep Purewal 

Modern Family (2009-)

It’s summer vacation! That means it’s time to take it easy and put your feet up. Why don’t you spend the time catching up on Modern Family? Each episode is short, sweet, and very funny.

Modern Family centres around the lives of an extended family living in Los Angeles.

Jay Pritchett, a wealthy businessman, is married to the considerably younger – and very glamorous – Gloria. With her, comes Manny, her mature, sensitive, and rather poetic son. Claire is Jay’s daughter. She is the typical busy housewife. She has three children: Hayley, Alex and Luke. Although you might have to count her husband, Phil, as her fourth child. Jay also has a son called Mitchell. Gay son, I might add. This doesn’t always go down too well with the old-fashioned and tough guy Jay. Mitchell lives with his partner, the stereotypically gay Cam, and the couple have an adopted Vietnamese daughter, Lily.

Episode after episode, we see the family become closer and come to terms with their issues. Jay may at first seem slightly homophobic and dead inside, but we see that in reality, he cares about every member of his family.

Claire may feel jealous of her new stepmother at times: after all, nobody wants a step-mum who is younger and prettier than they are. In fact, at first, it seems that Claire would quite happily swap Gloria for Snow White’s evil stepmother. But, as she begins to understand Gloria, she finds that there is a lot more to her than a gold digger.

From the creators of Frasier, Modern Family combines ingenious wit with compelling storylines.

The first two seasons are available on Netflix and the first four seasons are available on DVD.

Sandeep Purewal

Fringe (2008-2013)

Fringe is a daring, often overlooked, but dearly loved sci-fi show which built one of the most impressively complex, emotional, and cinematic serialised narratives this side of Breaking Bad, with an extra dose of X-Files weirdness. The “Fringe Division” of the FBI investigates crazy and horrifying cases, the team itself composed of FBI Agent Olivia Dunham (the awesome Anna Torv), ex-con man Peter Bishop (the also wonderful Joshua Jackson), and his mad scientist father Walter (John Noble, also brilliant). The first season gets off to a fairly slow start, but the characters are compelling from the very beginning, and trust me – it gets insane. Sometimes maybe too much so for its own good, but the show never collapses under the weight of its mythology.

The complete run of Fringe is available on DVD, seasons 1 – 4 are available on Netflix.

Kambole Campbell

Rick and Morty (2013-)

The insane brainchild of Community creator Dan Harmon, and the voice of Lemongrab from Adventure Time, Justin Roiland, comes in the form of Rick and Morty. The simplest explanation of this brilliant, madcap animated science-fiction comedy, is that it takes the Doc and Marty relationship from Back to the Future, and turns the former into an alcoholic nihilistic narcissist. While the general ‘darkness’ of the show is often played for laughs, it is not always without consequence – the sixth episode ending with a devastating twist which informs Morty’s character for the rest of the season. The Futurama-esque combination of cynicism, poignancy, vulgarity and hilarity helps to make Rick and Morty’s first season not just the strongest of an animated show, but of any television debut this year.

The entire first season of Rick and Morty is currently available for free on the Adult Swim website.

Kambole Campbell