This is not only novel, it feels dramatically true: even when you’re dating as an adult, so much of what is said and unsaid plays out in the “type here” field of a text or direct message. Instagram messages – which, crucially, actually look like Instagram messages – serve as a major set for the show’s drama. It’s a sweet show, if a little stilted at times (plus, there’s sometimes a level of emotional maturity that feels more instructive than reflective of teenagers’ lives), but what stood out to me most of all was the way it excelled in something that so many TV programmes are absolutely awful at: Heartstopper is very, very good at depicting the simple act of texting. The show is also, of course, notable for the fact that it depicts a love story between two boys, while still being firmly within the time-honoured, and usually aggressively heterosexual, “high school romantic comedy-drama” genre. There are longing glances, mean “popular” kids, and lingering shots of hands brushing together that remind you of all the roiling significance with which you used to treat the moment when someone you fancied lent you their pen in Maths. The new Netflix series Heartstopper – about an out gay 15-year-old, Charlie, and his love story with a boy in the year above him at school, Nick – has everything you expect from a teen romance.
