When it comes to global pop culture, the fascination with producing shows for teenagers will not really go away. There will always be teenagers who will replace those who grew up; the audience supply is endless! So what TV producers do is to create shows that will entice them to no end. And that is what The Society is doing right now.
This new show from Netflix is the hottest new teen TV show to binge-watch. Imagine teenage audiences getting to watch their fellow teenagers on TV as they live in a society that suddenly didn’t have any adults. Sounds familiar? That’s because it’s the theme of an old dystopian young adult novel called Lord of the Flies wherein a group of teenage boys crash on a deserted island. There, they try to create or recreate reality as they knew it. It’s the same dilemma with the kids in The Society. Only in this one, they experienced having adults around. And now, it’s up to them to discover where their parents are and what happened to them and their town, for real.
Of course, this show’s teen flavor gets amplified tenfold to make it distinct from other shows. And the mysterious circumstances of this rather dystopian-like world they now inhabit provide that difference. As for similarities, it won’t be a teen show without the usual teen concerns, such as having high school cliques, love triangles, catty exchanges, and “friendly” competition. Yep, they’re all there!
Catch this show on Netflix for fun! And after that, if you still want these teen show elements, here are some more recommendations.
Stranger Things
If The Society had older teens runing the show, Stranger Things have younger teens in there. Specifically, these teens are living before the time of the internet: their main idea of fun revolves around reading comic books, playing Dungeons and Dragons tabletop games, biking around, communicating with walkie-talkies, and playing “ancient” video game consoles like Atari.
But of course, this won’t be an intriguing teen show without mysterious circumstances. It won’t be called Stranger Things for no reason, right? So what happens here is that these four teen boys also find another teen the same age as them, only this time, it’s a girl. But she is bald, unorthodox, unschooled about the way society or school works. It turns out that this girl is a product of a lifelong human experiment of some sort – because she has telekinetic powers. Ooh, intriguing!
Catch the story of Eleven and the boys on Netflix streaming in all regions now. Season 3 is just around the corner so go binge-watch on the first 2 seasons now.
13 Reasons Why
Another teen mystery show pursues a morbid track in the form of death and bullying. This is 13 Reasons Why, the controversial teen drama that’s based on a young adult novel by Jay Asher. The main peg here is that 17-year-old Hannah Baker committed suicide, and nobody knows why – except one boy: Clay Jensen.
How does Clay know it? Because Hannah told him so. Well, indirectly, that is. Before deciding on taking her own life, Hannah decided to record her voice on several cassette tapes, narrating how she arrived at that dark decision of hers. And she provided several reasons why, in the form of a person for each reason. Each person, all of whom are classmates or figures in her school, who contributed to the circumstances gets their own tape where Hannah narrates their encounters – mostly bad ones – that led her to kill herself.
With such guts and also darkness, the show became a hit among teens and adults alike. The first season on Netflix was based solely on the book. But they opened up avenues where a second season can explore more, and that’s what they did. Watch both seasons on Netflix now.
The 100
If it isn’t a mystery show or a thriller full of teens, it’s a sci-fi tale of a post-apocalyptic proportion that TV execs seem to produce lately. Such is the case with the 2014 show called The 100 on The CW channel.
Following the post-apocalyptic thread, The 100 focuses on life after earth has been ruined by some nuclear attack or explosion of sorts, you know, the usual disaster. Only this time, a huge ship was able to transport many humans outside of it. However, after almost a hundred years in space, this ship now has newer generations of people in it, as people didn’t stop procreating, of course. The result? Overcapacity. The solution? Explore if the earth is okay to revisit again and to see if it’s worth living on again. But how?
For such a dangerous mission, only fools or the forced will go out and do this exploration of a hostile post-nuclear threat world. So around 100 juvenile delinquents got picked because they’re still in the prime of their lives, and also they’re forced into it because they’re viewed as criminals in their refurbished society. This is where the show gets its title: from the hundred teens.
Season 1 had 100 of these kids explore earth and discover the mysterious surrounding and the survivors that remained there. Of course, with this kind of number, it’s also a Hunger Games-type of dystopia wherein only the strongest survive. And indeed, in season 2, we only see 48 of the original 100 teens were left to continue on the search and the story.
But we’ll stop with the teaser there so it’s up to you to discover what happens to these teens upon reaching season 6 which concluded only this 2019. And before they start airing season 7 next year, time to binge-watch this first on Amazon, Netflix, Fandangonow or Google Play.
Riverdale
What happens when Archie Andrews and his original 1930s gang gets a reboot for the millennials and Generation Z? Why, it becomes Riverdale, the hit teen show, that’s what!
People who grew up reading these comics should not expect this gang to be as goody two-shoes as the original, though. That’s because this 2017 reimagining is full of mystery, intrigue and dark dilemmas that Archie and his reliable gang of friends have to face in their town. So in essence, the whole town of theirs is also part of the characters here. And rightfully so. That’s because the show revolves around unsolved crimes that affects the whole town. During the first season, it was the death of the rich boy named Jason Blossom, the descendant of the town’s founder-tycoon. The second season had Archie and the gang pursuing an unknown assailant known as the Black Hood. This unknown assailant almost killed Archie’s dad. So of course, they tried to look for him to stop him.
The recently concluded season 3 also has all the teen-focused intrigues and mysteries intact. But this time, each of our individual teen favorites also needed to experience some adulting of their own. Imagine starting the show with Archie getting arrested and sent to jail! Nothing can be more intriguing and mysterious than that! And you grow up pretty darn fast with that kind of catalyst!
Catch all 3 seasons of Riverdale on Netflix or The CW now! You can also check it out on VUDU, Google Play and Fandangonow.
Twisted
What if a teenager spent the prime of his preteen years in jail? Have you ever wondered what kind of older teen he will grow up to be when he gets released? That’s the mysterious premise that the show Twisted explored when it debuted in 2013.
Even though the show only lasted for 1 season, its 19 episodes were written with a good character arc for the teen antihero of this show. Played by Avan Jogia, the show focused on an 11-year-old named Danny Desai who was wrongfully charged with murder. What hurts more here is that the supposed victim was his aunt. So since he is just a preteen back then, he got sent to juvenile prison instead of a real one. And he also got released eventually, when he was already 16 years old.
What’s an older teen to do to pick up the pieces of his young life? First, he needs to reconnect with people he lost in touch with. So it’s another layer of reintegrating into society because he also has to reintegrate as a teenager, and as a new kid on the block – even if that proverbial block isn’t really that new for him. However, as if he has not yet met his quota of mysteries in life, poor Danny becomes the suspect again in another murder. Only this time, the murdered person is a young person like him, a classmate in school. Since he already has a prior record, it’s hard not to pin this one again on him, right? So it’s up to Danny to solve this mystery to save his life, again.
Watch this intriguing teen show on Amazon, Hulu, DirecTV, freeform, and Google Play.
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