But soon we get to see what Simone is dealing with, both as a social worker and in her relationship with Patrick, and Patrick gets his own spotlight, as does Phoebe and, later, Tegan’s new best friend Maya (Amanda Fix).

At first, the show is just trading off between Tegan and Sara.

And a really engaging vibe, at that.īornheimer (center, left) and Smulders as Patrick and Simone Michelle Faye/Amazon FreeveeĪnd High School structures itself so that all the episodes before the season finale are presented through specific points of view, with title cards to clarify whom we’re following for half of each installment. Significant things happen over the course of the season - important friendships made, crucial relationships rent asunder, and, of course, the birth of an enduring musical group - but mostly it’s a vibe. Scenes are alternately very short or lingering, in a way that neatly conveys how, at this age, life either comes at you very fast or seems to take forever to happen, and how difficult it can be to figure out the reasons for one speed versus the other. Here, she takes a more impressionistic, indie-film approach that very much suits the material. An actress ( Veep, But I’m a Cheerleader) and sometime-director, DuVall had an early pandemic hit with the Hulu film Happiest Season, which was stylistically a fairly conventional rom-com, albeit one where the central characters were all gay women. And since Sara has spent the summer freezing out Tegan while monopolizing their once-shared best friend Phoebe (Olivia Rouyre), both are essentially on their own.ĭuVall writes and/or directs the majority of the eight-episode season, with Kittrell handling a few scripts and Rebecca Asher helming a few installments in the middle. They are preparing to start at a new high school where they know no one but each other. Tegan and Sara live with their mother Simone (Cobie Smulders, terrific, and once again putting her native Canadian accent to good use) and stepfather Patrick (Kyle Bornheimer, excellent in a rare dramatic role).

High School begins in Calgary in the fall of 1995. Whatever terrible name it uses, you can watch their shows - several of them quite good, like the loose comedy Sprung and the quasi-spinoff Bosch: Legacy - via the Amazon Prime Video app presentation-wise, the only difference between these and, say, Jack Reacher, is that there are periodic commercial breaks. (*) The show is part of the growing library of originals for Freevee, a.k.a. At times, it is wonderful for each of them to have someone they can relate to so deeply at others, one sister starts to view the other as a mirror image she wishes she could stop looking at for a while. They have slight differences in temperament and vocal pitch, but at this age there’s not a lot to distinguish one from the other. They are both gradually realizing that they’re queer, even if one is further along in that journey than the other when High School begins. They listen to the same music, and in time begin playing their own music together. They dress in the same baggy, mid-Nineties style. For teenagers Tegan and Sara Quin - or, at least, for the lightly fictionalized versions of the beloved Canadian indie-pop duo that twins Railey and Seazynn Gilliland play in the new half-hour drama High School - things are even more complicated. You are in the midst of a struggle to define who you want to be, and here is this person who looks exactly like you, lives in your house, goes to your school, and is constantly inviting comparisons from outsiders. Going through adolescence with an identical twin has its challenges.

Twitter tegan and sara