“Sterling Point” has all the hallmarks of your usual YA obsession — yearning, an awkward love triangle, a lack of adult supervision, an enviable waterfront setting and complicated friendships. Unlike most other YA series of the moment, it’s an original story that isn’t based on a book. Created by Megan Park, the writer-director behind Sundance hit “My Old Ass” and an actor with roots in the coming-of-age circuit in shows like “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” the heartfelt drama centers heavily on the complex relationship between two teens who discover they’re half sisters after a death exposes a deep family secret.
It’s the latest series helping Prime Video step further into its WB/The CW era as a go-to destination for younger audiences, joining hits that include “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” “Every Year After,” “We Were Liars” and “Off Campus.” Not to show my millennial wrinkles, but unless the streamer invests in a campaign that evokes the spirit of late ‘90s marketing push known as “The Faces of WB,” what’s even the point of it all? Until then, in this week’s Guest Spot, we spoke with Park about the series that has teen drama enthusiasts hooked.
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Also in this week’s Screen Gab, our writers recommend a six-part British television drama that recounts the tragic 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 and a 2007 stoner comedy directed by Gregg Araki that will help you mellow out and pregame this weekend’s latest addition to the genre. — Yvonne Villarreal
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Recommendations from the film and TV experts at The Times
Phyllis Logan, left, Molly Geddes and Cora Bissett in “The Bombing of Pan Am 103.”
(Netflix)
“The Bombing of Pan Am 103” (Netflix)
Admittedly, I didn’t know a lot about the Pan Am flight disaster that this miniseries depicts, but I’m glad that’s no longer the case. This BBC production (it debuted in the U.K. last year) depicts the stories of American and Scottish investigators who spent more than a decade combing through evidence, clues and tips to bring justice to the families affected by the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. In 1988, the commercial jetliner was transporting 259 people, including 190 Americans, when it exploded over the skies of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing everyone on board and 11 Scots on the ground. Until the events of Sept. 11, 2001, it was one of the most lethal acts of air terrorism, according to the FBI. In the series, we see the gravity of the disaster, but also a deep layer of humanity, showing how Lockerbie and its citizens were irrevocably changed, yet their compassion never wavered, whether for each other or the victims’ families, who formed a lasting bond in an unlikely place. The main characters in the show are based on real-life people: Connor Swindells is DS Ed McCusker, who helped lead the investigation in Scotland; Patrick J. Adams is FBI Agent Dick Marquise, who led the American investigation; and the brilliant Merritt Wever is Kathryn Turman, a tireless advocate whose work led to reforms and services for families of victims. Be prepared to watch with a box of tissues. — Maira Garcia
Anna Faris, John Krasinski, center, Michael Shamus Wiles in 2007’s “Smiley Face.”
(Lacey Terrell / First Look Pictures)
“Smiley Face” (Prime Video)
This has been a stand-out summer for highbrow discourse about Homeric adaptations. As a reward, let’s get stupid with Gregg Araki’s 2007 stoner flick “Smiley Face,” a giddy, silly romp about a slacker (Anna Faris) whose troubles start when she snarfs a plate of pot cupcakes for breakfast. Her misadventures treat us to a tour of L.A. — from a Hollywood casting office to the Venice Beach boardwalk, with a pit stop at a meat-packing plant in El Monte. Even better, it’s a tour de force performance from Faris, who plays an impulsive mess with the fearlessness of a clown leaping into a kiddie pool of pudding. She deserved to make a dozen more movies just like it. (The “Scary Movie” franchise only halfway counts.) If “Smiley Face” gives you the munchies for a great new comedy, check out “The Wrong Girls” with Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat and Araki’s latest farce, “I Want Your Sex,” which stars a ferociously funny Olivia Wilde. — Amy Nicholson
Guest spot
A weekly chat with actors, writers, directors and more about what they’re working on — and what they’re watching
Ella Rubin and Amélie Hoeferle in “Sterling Point.”
(Prime Video)
The enemies-to-lovers romance trope in a teen drama? It’s been done. “Sterling Point” anchors its premise on an enemies(ish)-to-sisters storyline. The coming-of-age drama opens with 17-year-old twins, Annie Jacobson (Ella Rubin) and her twin brother Connor (Keen Ruffalo), who were raised in New York City and inherit a Canadian island following the death of their estranged grandfather. The series follows Annie as she sets out to the island and encounters Ramona (Amélie Hoeferle), the half sister she didn’t know existed until she arrived there. Their initial friction gives way to a tight bond as they piece together emotionally heavy family secrets.
The series hails from Megan Park, who has become known for her nuanced stories about young people with films like “The Fallout,” a drama starring Jenna Ortega about the aftermath of a school shooting, and the Aubrey Plaza-led “My Old Ass,” about a teenager who meets her older self while on a mushroom trip. Over video call, Park discussed the “Sterling Point’s” origins, her hopes for Season 2 and the coming-of-age stories that she admired growing up. — Y.V.
Many series about and catering to young adults right now, some of which are part of Prime Video’s lineup, are based on books that have built-in fan bases. Did that make “Sterling Point” a harder sell? What was your experience of pitching it?
Yes, I think people are always more nervous to take a risk on something brand new when you’re like, “This is just a weird idea I had in my brain, but trust me I think it’ll work.” But I was really lucky with Amazon being so supportive because they had just acquired “My Old Ass” and I think they understood the voice and the stories that I was wanting to tell with the show. I was shocked that people were willing to take the risk of being like, we’re going to go in a writers room and we’re going to figure out the show in an old-school way; we’re not going to rely on any kind of built-in audience or IP. I’m very thankful for Amazon for taking that chance on us. It’s not that I’m against adapting IP. I’m sure I would do that at some point, but I had an idea and somebody still wanted to listen to it, so I feel very grateful for that.
What inspired this story ?
I wanted to try [writing for] TV because I was like, “Well, eight hours is a lot more content than just making a movie.” That was a fun challenge to me. When I was acting, I spent so many years doing TV, so it felt like home. For me, it was the sisterhood story and sort of the the idea of these two young women who are connected by this woman that they don’t know and don’t feel like her death has necessarily affected either one of them, and it has very much affected both of them. I thought it was an interesting idea to explore, nature versus nurture. I come from a family where there’s a lot of adoption, and I had also never really seen a character like Annie where they were adopted and they didn’t have the desire to seek out their biological family, and that was just something they were fine with. That’s been an experience of a lot of people in my family. Oftentimes, [we see] stories about you know people wanting to find their biological family. Both of them exist, but I hadn’t seen the latter in a lot of things. I was excited to explore that.
Daniel Quinn-Toye, Bo Bragason and Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie in “Sterling Point.”
(Prime Video)
Identity, and how that’s shaped by our parents, drives so much of the story. What interested you in that parent-child or just familial dynamic?
I’ve always just loved stories that are about that; family dynamics are the most interesting to me because they’re so full of triggers, and everybody has some kind of crazy story within their family, or a mystery. At that age, you’re finally realizing your parents are just people too, and they maybe don’t know everything. And maybe you have different ideas or thoughts about how the world works than your parents, and that can sometimes not go over very well. It is an interesting time. And as a mom now with children — I have a 2- and 6-year-old — you think a lot about like, “Wow, how are my kids going to feel about A, B, and C when they’re this age? What’s my relationship going to be with them as teenagers and adults?” It’s so wild to think about. I was also writing it, thinking about a lot about the mom and the parents POV as well.
The show has romance or feelings of infatuation that are a hallmark of young adult dramas, but it’s not the focus of the show. It’s the relationship between the sisters. There’ve been studies saying that teens want less sex in TV and movies, that they prefer watching stories about deep friendships or platonic relationships. Was that top of mind for you at all?
You’re the first person who’s asked me that, and I feel like yes. We love a love triangle, we love a love story — it’s so fun and such an escape; it’s almost like an essential part of a show in a way. But especially this generation, their friendships are deeply important and they live at home longer, statistically. Their relationships, their parents, are a lot different than maybe millennials’. When I was in high school, I was never involved in romantic relationships. That was a later part of life, and I feel like I’ve talked to a lot of people, they were like, I wasn’t dating really in high school. I was not ready and not there yet. You don’t often see that. And so it was fun to have this this North Star that the real love story and the real heart of the show is the sisterhood, and I hope that sets the show apart in an exciting way, because it felt that way when we were writing it.
The season ends with Annie and Ramona essentially swapping locations. What are you interested in exploring in a Season 2 with these characters?
I have a whole bunch of ideas left, so we shall see. There’s a lot between these two young women having now experienced each other’s lives fully that is going to be really interesting to explore and pick up, hopefully, if we get the chance to. Listen, eight hours seem like a lot, but once you get into it, you’re like, “Wait, man, there’s eight hours more that I think I could get deeper into A, B, and C.” And there’s so many great supporting characters in the show, and we had stuff [for them] that we wanted to fit in for them in Season 1 that we just couldn’t fit in. Season 2 could be fun in that way, where you know these people and know the world, and now you can go more into [who they are.] Who is Oona’s mom? There’s all these other characters who we can get more into their world as well.
The YA genre is thriving right now. And it’s not even just young people tuning in — I feel like I see so many TikToks from millennials and Gen X talking about their obsession with them. Why do you think we’re still turning to these types of stories later in adulthood?
Because it’s nostalgic. It’s such a defining time in every single person’s life. It’s why young people are finding shows that we grew up on, like “One Tree Hill” or “Dawson’s Creek.” And why women in their 50s or 60s are still relating to the newer shows like “Off Campus” and and “Elle.” It doesn’t matter the era; it’s just the unique sort of idea that it’s the first this, the first that; the defining moments of our lives in so many ways.
In the spirit of this series, what were some of the coming-of-age films, TV series or books that shaped you?
I grew up in like the era of such great coming-of-age comedies — “Clueless” was a big one for me — and really epic rom-coms like “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.” Those movies really stuck with me. I would say that Chris Columbus, as a filmmaker, makes movies like “Mrs. Doubtfire,” “Step Mom” — those movies that are such wild ideas or really sad things, but you’re also unexpectedly crying. In “Mrs. Doubtfire,” you’re like, oh, this is a story about a dad who misses his kids, but it’s so heartfelt but also funny at the same time.” I want to make things that are heartfelt, which isn’t necessarily a cool word to some people. I think it’s cool because I want to make things that are meaningful but also lead with their heart, and you’re surprised when the emotion comes. It’s not just super, super dark or super, super light and fluffy; it hopefully falls perfectly right in the middle.
Fans are already “obsessed” with Prime Video’s recent release Sterling Point
Sully (Nikko Angelo Hinayo) and Ellis (Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie) in Sterling Point(Image: Sabrina Lantos/Prime Video)
A brand new coming-of-age drama has been released on Prime Video, and fans are obsessed.
Created by Megan Park, Sterling Point follows a 17-year-old girl named Annie Jacobson who finds herself inheriting an entire island in Canada which was was once owned by her grandad. Her life takes a turn and she finds new friends, budding romances and untold family secrets along the way.
Prime Video’s official synopsis reveals: “Sterling Point is a heartfelt, coming-of-age drama led by 17-year-old Annie Jacobson (Ella Rubin). Raised in New York City with her twin brother (Keen Ruffalo) and loving adoptive father (Jay Duplass), Annie’s life takes a turn when she inherits her mysterious grandfather’s island in Canada.
“There, she finds new friends, budding romances and untold family secrets. The cast also includes Amélie Hoeferle, Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie, Daniel Quinn-Toye, Bo Bragason, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Nikko Angelo Hinayo, Mabel Strachan, Elle-Maija Talifeathers, and Missi Pyle.”
Fans are already obsessed, calling for another season, as one person wrote on X: “Need a #SterlingPoint season 2.” Another echoed: “GUYS THIS SHOW IS AMAZING I NEED SEASON 2.”
A third added: “The first needle drop from this show being maggots for brains had me IMMEDIATELY locked in.” On Instagram, one person stated: “THE show of the summer”, as another admitted: “I’m already obsessed.”
But some may be wondering who star Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie is and how old he may be – here’s everything we know about the Canadian actor.
Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie’s age and background
Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie is a Canadian actor from Quebec who rose to fame following his performance in A Colony in 2018 – a performance which earned him a Canadian Screen Award for Best Supporting Actor. According to website Fandom, he is around 33 years old, having been born in 1993.
Fans may also recognise Jacob from his appearance in Billie Blue in 2023 and Bootlegger in 2021. He has also appeared in Troubled Waters where he plays character Billie. In 2023 he also appeared in Premier Trio as Xavier Laveau-Roy.
Now, in Sterling Point, Jacob has taken on the role of Ellis, who meets Annie after touching down in Toronto and immediately forms a connection with her. Previously speaking to Toronto Life, Jacob admitted that he had started acting from the age of 14, but up until 2021 had only acted in French.
Speaking about when he heard about his role, he said: “I was really emotional—this is the biggest project I’ve ever been a part of. I called my dad immediately. I was stunned.”
If we are lucky enough to survive into our 20s, and have attained some degree of adult consciousness, we all will have lived a coming-of-age story. It’s a powerful, relatable basis for fiction or memoir or some combination of the two. Poignant. Piquant. It might be hilarious or depressing or, probably, both at once. Stories of first times, of big feelings imperfectly grasped, of life coming into focus for better or worse. Engaging with them as a reader or viewer, we look back on who we were, who we wanted to be, who we wish we hadn’t been. I get a little misty remembering my own clumsy progress through that flower-filled minefield. Remind me never to tell you about it sometime.
Television likes a coming-of-age story, and has logged some great ones — “My So-Called Life,”“Never Have I Ever,” “Freaks and Geeks,”“Everybody Hates Chris” — along with … some other ones. Premiering Wednesday are two series focusing on characters in their late teens; while stylistically, and one would say morally, miles apart, they nevertheless cover some of the same ground. There are things you can’t avoid growing up, wherever your life is set.
A rich-kids drama with a side of serial murder set in 1981 Los Angeles, FX‘s “The Shards” plants itself at the intersection of Bret Easton Ellis, whose 2023 “autofictional” novel it’s based on, and co-creator Ryan Murphy, in one of his bloodier moods, amplifying each other’s taste for the sensational and surfaces. Set on a lake in Canada, Prime Video’s “Sterling Point,” from Megan Park (“My Old Ass”), unrolls like a leisurely indie film; there will not be blood.
Kaia Gerber, from left, Igby Rigney, Hayes Warner, Homer Gere and Graham Campbell in FX’s “The Shards.”
(FX)
Igby Rigney plays Ellis in “The Shards,” narrating from the future. Bret shares with his authorial namesake an avocation and a love for Joan Didion (“Like all aspiring writers of my generation, I wanted to write like Didion. With restraint, economy and total control. If i could write like that, I could be like that. Or so I thought.”), as well as a manuscript titled “Less Than Zero,” though here it’s a screen treatment rather than the 1985 novel that made the author famous at 21. (One character will call it “brilliant.”)
As did Real Bret, TV Bret attends the private Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, where he is one in a small clique of rich, beautiful cool kids: Susan Reynolds (Kaia Gerber, daughter of Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber) and Debbie Schaffer (Hayes Warner) in contrasting shades of Veronica and Betty; and Susan’s jock boyfriend, Thom (Graham Campbell). Debbie is Bret’s girlfriend, though he is also actively, if secretly gay, and has a kind of thing for Susan. They are shallow, if sad, nostalgic for their own untrammeled youth; they still have a little innocence left to lose. Because Bret is kind to marginal characters, beneath the notice of his friends, from whom he mentally distances himself by virtue of observing them (he’s Nick Carraway in Wayfarers), he reads as slightly more sympathetic, if no less tedious, and possibly more problematic. “I told myself I was only going to chronicle the decadence,” says narrator Bret, “an excuse I’d return to many times in my career.”
Into this shakily ordered universe comes handsome, charismatic, mysterious new kid Robert Mallory (Homer Gere, son of Richard, with Carey Lowell), whom Bret remembers seeing at a screening of “The Shining” a year before, though Robert denies having been there. Soon he has cast a spell over Bret’s friends, stirring in Bret twin feelings of obsession and competition: “I smelled him before I saw him — it was cedar and sandalwood as if he had just walked through a forest of citrus,” but also, “He was up to something and it was up to me to find out exactly what that was.”
Around the same time that Robert arrives, a serial killer, eventually dubbed the Trawler, comes to town. (Happily, we see only the elaborately staged, possibly satanic results of their work, not the process.) Who this person is, and what less than random reasons might explain the murders, remains a mystery at least through the nine out of 10 episodes available to review. But Bret points a finger so often at Robert that, by the mathematics of television drama, one can only believe him innocent. Still, no idea.
It’s a world from which adults are almost entirely missing, and when they are not, they are disappointing, or trouble. Significantly, there are Wes Bentley as Debbie’s skeezy movie producer father and Evan Rachel Wood as Debbie’s mother, a narcotized failed actor straight out of “Valley of the Dolls.” Jordan Roth plays Bentley’s somewhat sinister, sometimes helpful right hand kitted out post-glam Bowie style.
To be perfectly honest, if one set out to create a show I would be constitutionally disposed not to care for, this is it, though I allow that this is also exactly a show some people would be born to love. It’s often absurd and always melodramatic — not in itself a criticism — but if you’re in the market for a slick miniseries about cocaine-sniffing kids (and adults), murder, animal mutilation, sex and sports cars in New Wave L.A., with cameos from Hamburger Hamlet and Orange Julius and an excellent selection of period songs on the soundtrack, you can’t do better than this.
Ella Rubin, left, and Bo Bragason in Prime Video’s “Sterling Point.”
(Sabrina Lantos / Prime Video)
“Sterling Point,” on the other hand, is just my cup of Canadian Maple Syrup Soda. (It’s a thing.)
Ella Rubin plays Annie Jacobson, and like the kids in “The Shards,” we meet her suspended between her junior and senior years of high school, facing a summer she had planned to fill with more school. “You’re 17,” says her knuckleheaded, yet strangely perceptive twin brother Connor (Keen Ruffalo, son of Mark), “you act like you’re 30,” suggesting instead a period of “just going bug wild.”
Then a letter from a lawyer arrives, and it transpires that their maternal grandfather, whom they never knew, has left them, among other things, an island in Ontario’s Muskoka Lakes district. (Their mother died when the twins were 2.) Annie leaves their father (Jay Duplass) a misdirecting Post-It note — she knows he’s been lying to her about her grandfather — and scurries off to pierce the heart of this mystery, which comes from an incomplete instruction to “find her.” (She’s a rich girl. Scurrying from New York to rural Canada doesn’t require a second thought.)
Arriving by seaplane, Annie meets Ellis (Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie), a townie working for Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s marina owner, Joe, who carries himself like a man with a secret. Ellis, a sweet guy not averse to skimming a little off the top when dealing with moneyed customers — it’s a summer getaway for the rich — takes an immediate shine to Annie. This will be complicated by the coincidental appearance of Rory (Daniel Quinn-Toye), a former piano prodigy Annie knows from New York, who’s in residence with his mother (Missi Pyle, ever a treat to see), who always seems just a little bit drunk and thinks nothing of pouring one out for the kids. (Adult presence is minimal.) There are posh parties, through which some of the young characters pass, though no one is doing cocaine or getting murdered. (There is pot and underage drinking.)
The crew is filled out by Oona (Bo Bragason), a sort of seafaring vagabond who lives on a boat with her 12-year-old sister Maple (Mabel Strachan), and Ramona (Amélie Hoeferle, terrific) an angry local returning after some time away, and possibly presenting the answer to a riddle.
What makes “Sterling Point” work so beautifully is its rare, real, unhurried sense of of time; it stretches out the way days do when you’re young, a sense heightened by the fact that Annie speaks twice as fast and as much as anyone else in the series. (It’s that New York energy.) Though there are some low-key melodramatic plot points, the show feels diaristic. It isn’t that the stakes are low, or that conflict is nonexistent, but that the drama is driven by issues of connection, identity, love and longing. (As in “The Shards,” there’s a scene in which someone who likes someone discovers them liking someone else — but who hasn’t been there.)
The series emanates a sense of urgency without cooking up abnormally dramatic situations. There is a lot of conversation, which, indeed, is what takes up a large portion of teenage life. One couldn’t exactly call “Sterling Point” unglamorous, since this is an attractive green and blue world — all that water makes the show refreshing to watch in a heat wave — and the cast is good-looking, in interesting ways, chosen, I would guess, not for perfection but for soulfulness. Who wouldn’t want to live here?
