Off-the-charts good

As a millennial, I should be too old for this. A romantic comedy series centred on a music student and the university’s star ice hockey player.

And yet, from the jump, I was completely locked in.

The story follows Hannah Wells, a studious arts student majoring in classical composition who loses her scholarship and makes the switch to pop, because that’s where the money’s at. She has a crush on Justin, a musician who barely knows she exists.

The action is set in motion when Garrett Graham makes a deal with Hannah to tutor him in philosophy so he can maintain his grade and stay on the hockey team. In return, he’ll pretend to be dating Hannah to help her get Justin’s attention.

The fun point of tension is this: as Hannah and Garrett spend time together, they begin to develop feelings. But they keep reminding each other and themselves that it’s just a deal in service of attaining Hannah’s true object of affection, whom she still feels a pull towards.

The more serious points of tension are these: Hannah has to write a pop song that’s so good it wins her another scholarship. But she is mentally blocked from writing lyrics – and we come to learn the traumatic reason why. Garrett is wrestling with his relationship to hockey, the only thing he’s ever been good at, and his relationship with his father – an ice hockey legend with a dark streak Garrett is afraid he has inherited.

The two leads are bolstered by a fun cast of characters: Hannah’s roommate and best friend and Garrett’s house of ice hockey brothers-in-arms – who are all bro-y, but not in a problematic frat house kind of way.

The latter speaks to the nature of the show. It took me a beat to reconcile how the show can be riven with sex and drinking and partying, yet also be wholesome. What I arrived at was this: there’s drama, and while bad things happen, it’s all going to be OK because your friends have your back. And most of the world’s characters are wellintentioned anyway.

One of the best things about Off Campus is its needle drops, which is fortunate because music is a huge part of the show. It functions not only as soundtrack but what characters listen to and perform. It operates at multiple levels, revealing the thoughts of characters (see Garrett queuing up The Beaches’ Edge of the Beach, which Hannah recommended to him, as he’s watching her share a moment with Justin), creating affinity between characters (Garrett being awestruck by Hannah’s singing) as well as conveying emotion (AC/DC’s Dirty Deeds lends a masculine energy to a montage of the ice hockey bros working out – a scene that evokes Top Gun’s infamous volleyball scene and score, close-ups of gold chains dangling on sweaty torsos and all).

As that selection suggests, Off Campus’s music choices span six decades and a range of genres. Rather than seeming like a ploy to hook in viewers of all ages, it feels like a genuine reflection of Gen Z tastes and the Spotify age we live in, where history’s entire discography is available at a few clicks.

Across its eight episodes, things move at a steady clip, with plot threads never overstaying their welcome and dramas never being strained to the point of melodrama.

Tropes are a dime a dozen, but the show uses them to great effect. Instead of coming off unoriginal, Off Campus deftly interweaves characters and plotlines, such that outcomes aren’t so much predictable as inevitable and earned.

Come for the romance. Stay for Hannah’s rendition of Warrant’s Cherry Pie.