Did you love “My Old Ass” or “The Fallout?” You have Megan Park to thank for that, and her new series, “Sterling Point,” might just become your new favorite binge-watch.
Ella Rubin stars in the Amazon Prime Video original series “Sterling Point,” which was created by Park and is commandeered by Park, Josh Schwartz, and Stephanie Savage, who share showrunning duties. (More about Schwartz and Savage in just a bit.) Rubin’s protagonist, Annie Jacobson, who lives in New York City, is shocked when her grandfather passes away and leaves her a massive estate on a Canadian island. Alongside her twin brother Connor (Keen Ruffalo, Mark Ruffalo’s son), Annie decamps to the Canadian island and meets a whole host of characters, including Ramona (Amélie Hoeferle), who’s hanging out at the late grandfather’s home.
“Sterling Point” might be a young adult show, but it’s more grounded and gritty than your typical YA fare. As Park told The Hollywood Reporter, “I wanted to make a YA show that felt as authentic as possible.” Schwartz, who noted that he and Savage like to make shows where “kids are treated like adults,” took that train of thought further. “When you’re a teenager and you’re coming of age, everything feels so life and death and dramatic and emotional. You’re figuring yourself out in a way that really happens at that moment in your life,” Schwartz told the outlet. “It’s a rich source of drama, and Megan just mined it beautifully and with a really original, unique voice.”
So if you’re totally into “Sterling Point” and finish all eight episodes, which dropped on August 5, what’s next on your watchlist? We’ve got options. From other Schwartz-Savage joints to great YA dramas, here are five shows to check out if you love “Sterling Point.”
The Summer I Turned Pretty
Another Amazon Prime Video series that centers exclusively around young adults — albeit one that’s not particularly grounded or gritty — that you might want to check out after “Sterling Point” is “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” a three-season story based on the novel series of the same name by Jenny Han. The series, for which Han is also the showrunner, centers around the unfortunately nicknamed Isabel “Belly” Conklin (the effervescent Lola Tung), who spends all of her summers in the fictional town of Cousins Beach at the home of her mother Laurel Park’s (Jackie Chung) best friend Susannah Fisher (Rachel Blanchard). One fateful summer, Belly’s “sudden” prettiness (she’s been pretty literally the whole time, but whatever) attracts the attention of Susannah’s two sons Conrad and Jeremiah (Christopher Briney and Gavin Casalegno), who grew up with Belly as surrogate brothers but both nurse a crush on her when she arrives at the beach house all grown up.
Alongside her best friend Taylor (Rain Spencer) and older brother Steven (Sean Kaufman), Belly flits between the two brothers and tries to discover herself and find love, even as tragedy strikes the Fisher family. “The Summer I Turned Pretty” is soapy, campy, frequently ridiculous, and ultimately a show about the lengths one girl will go to for a great piece of real estate. (Seriously, the Fisher beach house is sick.) Still, it also manages to be a thoughtful, sweet, and engaging coming-of-age story, and by the time Belly picks a Fisher brother, your heart will feel as fully as Belly’s.
The Bold Type
The characters on “The Bold Type” are a little older than the ones on “Sterling Point” or, for that matter, “The Summer I Turned Pretty” — but their adventures in New York will have you absolutely glued to the TV anyway. Created by Sarah Watson, “The Bold Type” focuses on three young women — aspiring stylist Sutton Brady (future “The White Lotus” and “Sinners” standout Meghann Fahy), writer Jane Sloan (Katie Stevens), and social media expert and activist Kat Edison (Aisha Dee) — who all work together at a fictional magazine called Scarlet in New York City. (Former Cosmopolitan editor Joanna Coles, the show’s executive producer, partially based the narrative on her experience at the women’s magazine.)
As they navigate love, their sexual identities, their professions, and even extremely personal situations like family issues and illness, Sutton, Jane, and Kat all stick together no matter what … and frequently, their efforts at work are supported by the magazine’s formidable editor-in-chief Jacqueline Carlyle (“The Office” veteran Melora Hardin). Is “The Bold Type” heightened? Yes. Is it completely detached from reality when it comes to how publishing works? Yes, definitely (in one memorable scene, a character publishes a fully-formed article from a Google doc, which isn’t how any of that works). Is it well-acted, really fun, and extremely engaging? Absolutely.
Gossip Girl
Remember how we said we’d circle back to Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage? Well, before co-showrunning “Sterling Point” with Megan Park, they co-created “Gossip Girl,” a series that aired on The CW and is (very) loosely based on a series of young adult novels by New York City private school alum Cecily von Ziegesar.
The show kicks off when teenaged socialite Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) returns to Manhattan’s wealthy Upper East Side after skipping town and attending boarding school under unexplained circumstances, but unfortunately for Serena, her sudden reappearance sends the aforementioned Upper East Side into a full-on frenzy. First and foremost, Serena’s lifelong best friend Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester) is sort of horrified to see her high school’s queen bee return. Meanwhile, Blair’s boyfriend Nate Archibald (Chace Crawford) is concerned Serena will spill secrets about their past, bad boy Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick) is simply titillated, and Brooklyn-based brother and sister Dan and Jenny Humphrey (Penn Badgley and Taylor Momsen) are fascinated by the mythic figure who’s returned to their midst.
“Gossip Girl” is, unlike “Sterling Point,” not grounded in any sort of reality. This is a show where people come back from the dead, secret societies are introduced and discarded, Billy Baldwin shows up doing what can only be described as an impression of his brother Alec on “30 Rock,” and a character marries a prince. That doesn’t matter, though, because “Gossip Girl” is so much fun. Skip the HBO Max revival series, though; that one lacks the absurdity of the original and suffers for it. (Notably, the revival did not have Schwartz and Savage on board, so that could be a major factor.)
We Were Liars
Based on the novel of the same name by E. Lockhart, “We Were Liars,” another Amazon Prime Video original which released in 2025, centers around the wealthy Sinclair family, all of whom are keeping a ton of secrets. When we first meet Cadence “Cady” Sinclair Eastman (Emily Alyn Lind, who, coincidentally, appeared on the aforementioned “Gossip Girl” reboot), she’s 16 years old and preparing to spend yet another summer on Beechwood Island with her family, including her cousins Mirren and Johnny (Esther McGregor and Joseph Zada), as well as Gat Patil (Shubham Maheshwari), the nephew of Ed Patil (Rahul Kohli), the partner to Cady’s aunt Carrie (Mamie Gummer). Shortly after the show begins, Cady wakes up with no memory of the previous two months and learns that she was in an accident, but isn’t given any specifics … and is left in the dark about what happened to her.
“We Were Liars” is, again, quite a bit campier than “Sterling Point,” and the reveals are much more sensational and exaggerated. Still, it’ll definitely scratch the “Sterling Point” itch, especially when it introduces mystery after mystery about the wealthy Sinclair family. With one season on Amazon as of this writing, “We Were Liars” still has plenty of story to tell. Don’t you want to find out what happened to Cady?
The O.C.
One of the defining teen dramas of its era which was, incidentally, created by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, “The O.C.,” which aired for four seasons on Fox, is genuinely a highlight of the genre and an influence on all the shows that followed in its footsteps. When the series begins, Ryan Atwood (future “Gotham” star and anti-cryptocurrency activist Benjamin McKenzie) is caught trying to steal a car with his wayward brother in the impoverished California town of Chino; when his public defender Sandy Cohen (Peter Gallagher) takes pity on Ryan, he ends up whisked away to the gorgeous Cohen mansion in Orange County, much to the chagrin of Sandy’s high society wife and real estate developer Kirsten (Kelly Rowan). Eventually, though, Sandy and Kirsten officially welcome Ryan into the family, giving their awkward, nerdy, and completely friendless son Seth (Adam Brody) a lifeline.
“The O.C.” is smart, snappy, and a genuinely phenomenal TV show — especially thanks to its lead performers, including the ones we already mentioned and Mischa Barton as girl next door Marissa Cooper, Rachel Bilson as Seth’s dream girl Summer Roberts, and Melinda Clarke as Marissa’s conniving mother Julie Cooper. If we had it our way, “The O.C.” would be required viewing before you sit down and enjoy “Sterling Point” — but suffice to say, you should watch both of these teen dramas immediately.
“Sterling Point” Season 1 is streaming on Amazon Prime Video now.
