Approximately 5.4 billion people worldwide have a TV in their homes and watch them when they have free time, wish to relax for a bit, or want some quality time just to watch the shows they love. So what time of the year are people specifically teenagers watching TV or even the streaming apps on their phones for shows? During the summer! What were the best shows of the 2023 summer? Let me give you my favs!
1: Queen Charlotte (a Bridgerton Story). Queen Charlotte is a mini series addition to the book and TV series Bridgerton by Director Tom Verica starring main actors India Ria Amarteifio and Corey Mylchreest. This short series centers around forced love in the 1700’s between the upcoming Queen Charlotte and new king of England, king George. It shows the struggles and pressures of being on the throne. The new queen faces a lot of judgment because she was the descendant of Afonso the Third of Portugal and his African mistress making her different then most of the other influential people of the time, because she was mixed race. The viewer also sees the king struggling with his mental health, but the pair still fall for the other despite the odds. This mini series first debuted in May but was watched by a lot of people during the first couple weeks of summer. This show receives a 5/5 star rating. Even though this series wasn’t a longer one it still managed to tell a detailed and fast moving story at the same time. A lot of attention to detail was put into making this show through all of the designs and costumes they had to make and wear along with the ways each character talked. Very powerful lines were also shown when Young Queen Charlotte says, “I will stand with you between the heavens and the Earth. Do you love me?”
2: Heartstopper (second season) by Alice Oseman starring Kit Connor and Joe Locke which came out in August and was a comic book series before turning into a show. Heartstopper is about a group of friends but mainly two boys, Nick and Charlie that discover and explore more about themselves and their love throughout high school. Nick is the star player of the rugby team and has a friend group that is known to bully others and not be accepting of different sexualities so he struggles on the idea of coming out and starts to understand his feelings. Charlie has always known that he likes just boys but gets bullied because he got outed which results in him having an eating disorder but he has a loyal friend group that is always there for him, accepts him, and welcomes Nick to be in their group. This show falls under the 4/5 star rating. This show is very heartfelt and cute, but some parts of the story aren’t necessary for it all to play out right.For example, in the show when the high school classes take a trip to Paris, the viewer sees multiple other characters that feel a romantic connection with each other, but this seems very out of the ordinary and took away from the main part of the story.
3: The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han that was a book series before the show and gets a 3/5 stars. This show is about two best friends and their kids, Belly, Conrad, Jeremiah, and Steven that spend most of their summers at one of the bestfriends beach houses, Susannah, who has a battle with cancer. Everyone has to try to stay united through all of the hardships because of this and more entanglements appear because the only girl, Belly, gets feelings for both Jeremiah and Conrad. I enjoyed this show’s new season but sometimes the dialogue between the characters didn’t make sense and it seemed like the writers of the story tried too hard to make the actors sound more like teenagers. The best friend in the show Taylor would call Belly, “My Killa Bee” when the scene did not need that extra comment.
Overall, the summer 2023 was fun and short but had many good shows/series that came out. The best shows of summer 2023 overall have to be: Queen Charlotte, (a Bridgerton Story), Heartstopper, and The Summer I Turned Pretty. That’s a wrap on this summer’s show releases but this opens the door to next summers show possibilities!
