Generation TV review: Teen series’ young creator brings authenticity

You know how teen shows tend to be written by adults who know nothing of young people? You can’t say that about HBO’s newest show.

The first thing to know about TV series Generation is its co-creator is 19 years old.

Seeded by her own coming out to her parents at 15, Zelda Barnz started drawing from her experiences at 17, writing it down with the view that it could turn into a book.

Now, only two years after that, instead of a tome, it’s a daring TV series – premiering this week on Binge* – commissioned by HBO, co-created by her and her filmmaker father Daniel and executive produced by Lena Dunham.

Dunham launching Girls at 26 now seems old hat. That the younger Barnz is 19 is not just a fun fact designed to make those of us more advanced in age but not nearly as accomplished feel inadequate in comparison.

It’s to highlight that here is a TV series about a subset of young people that is authentic to their experiences. This isn’t a TV series helmed by people at least in their 30s trying to tell the stories of teenagers through consultation or by remembering their own youth of a vastly different time.

Much like Dunham capturing the vibe of middle-class New York women in their 20s so perfectly because she was one (well, maybe she was a little more than middle class), the bona fides in Generation are in every scene.

Justice Smith with co-stars Uly Schlesinger and Chase Sui Wonders.

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Generation’s logline of a group of teenagers navigating coming-of-age and discovering their sexuality sounds been-there-done-that, and very similar to those two other bracing HBO series about teenagers, Euphoria and We Are Who We Are.

The cast includes Chloe East, Uly Schlesinger, Lukita Maxwell, Chase Sui Wonders and The Get Down and Detective Pikachu star Justice Smith as the teens while familiar faces such as Martha Plimpton, Sam Trammell, Alicia Coppola and J. August Richards pop up as the parents.

Smith is particularly impressive here as the queer star water polo player with stellar school marks and a penchant for crop tops and rainbow suspenders – but, of course, Smith is a formidable screen presence in everything he does.

With its expertly balanced tone between the revels of growing up along with the more challenging aspects of that age is what makes Generation distinct from its more melodramatic peers such as 13 Reasons Why or the showy Euphoria which over-relied on style and shock.

Not that Generation isn’t often shocking, especially for those who might faint at the world of casual d*ck pics, copious swearing and googling for videos on “how to give birth in a mall”. Have some pearls on hand if you find yourself thinking, “The kids are not all right…”

The kids are all right.

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What these kids are, are really aware. Not naive upstarts in the way some adults see them but refreshing because they’re not worn down by cynicism and jadedness.

They accept queerness and non-binary genders the same way adults accept investment tax breaks.

The characters on Generation are funny, irreverent and unabashed. Yes, they have teen angst and vulnerabilities, they wonder whether their crush likes them back or if they’ve said (or texted) something mortifyingly embarrassing.

And some of their emotional issues or mistakes are higher stake, such as a fear of mortality in the fallout of a parental death or the darkly hilarious opening scene with that unscheduled shopping centre birth.

An ominous sequence featuring the anxiety of school lockdowns is leavened by pimple popping videos and genital-shaped birth marks in intimate places.

In injecting the fun without sidestepping the serious side of things, Generation is taking its playbook less from its dramatic contemporaries and more from the likes of Freaks and Geeks or even the very excellent PEN15, even though those two latter series are fuelled by nostalgia and this is very now.

Because adolescence isn’t dour 100 per cent of the time, and Generation serves itself well remembering that.

Generation is streaming on Binge from Thursday, March 11

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