8 hours ago
13
Off Campus is, in all senses, a straight copy of Heated Rivalry. The latter was based on the wildly popular gay romance novel series by Rachel Reid. The former is an adaptation of the wildly popular heterosexual romance novel series by Elle Kennedy. It’s a slick, soapy, spicy load of fun set in the world of hot twentysomething hockey-playing college students instead of pro-hockey teams and their hot twentysomething rising stars. I can recommend it to all who appreciate hot twentysomethings, bums, boobs, hockey (though as with Heated Rivalry there’s only a bit of that and mostly to get them naked in the showers again) and perfectly made trash TV. Sit back with your beverage of choice, turn off your brain and relax. As with its progenitor-competitor, Off Campus knows exactly what it’s doing, where it’s going and why – and so do you. It is deeply soothing and incredibly moreish.
First protagonist up is Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli), captain of the Briar University hockey team and son of a hockey legend, Phil Graham (Steve Howey). He appears to have it all – but does he? He has his quota of sex but refuses to let anyone become his girlfriend. Is he a playa as opposed to a player, simply being fair to them as he claims, because his heart belongs to hockey, or could there be a deeper reason for his emotional unavailability? Is it to do with his mother, who died from cancer years ago? What are we to make of the hostility he has towards his father? Or the flashbacks to a childhood full of raised voices and bruised knuckles? Hmm. Maybe he’ll have another shower while we ponder. What a handsome – I mean complicated – young man.
Second protagonist up is Hannah Wells, who is played by Ella Bright. This means UK viewers will have to pause for a moment and make some mental adjustments, because Bright came to fame here playing Darrell Rivers in the absolutely charming adaptation of Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers. Without a little brain-prep, the sight of a Blyton heroine here in this steaming mass of hormones will do your equilibrium no good at all. So consider this a health warning.
Such a warning is only made more necessary by the fact that Bright has been cast for the innate wholesomeness she brings to the part. Hannah is a music major (for which read “dorky outsider to the glamorous world of jocks”) whose scholarship – so she’s poor, but as bright as her name! – is abruptly terminated. She must now pivot, for reasons I am slightly unclear about, but I suspect the scriptwriters are too, so onward we go, to writing pop songs for a showcase instead of her preferred “classical” to get funding. But how can she write heartfelt lyrics when she has never had her … heart felt? It’s a conundrum.
And why has she never had her heart felt? Could it have anything to do with the panicky flashbacks she has which occur whenever she goes too near the jockiest of the school jocks – the kind you read about in frat stories that make the headlines? Maybe she’ll accidentally come across Garrett in the shower while she tidies the changing rooms (one of her many jobs, being aforementionedly poor) and we ponder.
Garrett is failing in a class that Hannah is smashing. Will she tutor him? No. Even though she needs the money, she hates hockey and jocks too much. Will she tutor him in return for him pretending to be her boyfriend to make Justin (Josh Heuston), the singer in a band she likes, want her? Yes. Does this make any kind of psychological sense? No. Is that the kind of question we should be asking? No!
Throw in the necessary secondary characters and B-plots: a supportive, sassy best friend for Hannah called Allie (Mika Abdalla), who has a long-term boyfriend but is getting bored and draws the eye of Garrett’s womanising roommate, Dean (Stephen Kalyn); a variety of girls known as “puck bunnies”, who hang around the hockey team hoping to be honoured with … well, lettuce or a puck I suppose, given the name. A woman of my age watching this is entitled to choose ignorance now and again, and we’re all set for a flawlessly executed fake-to-real romance (credibility enhanced by the lovely chemistry between the two leads). The romance is elevated by genuine wit and warmth, and given a little extra heft by the traumatic backstories that are handled with more grace than you would expect.
It is high-class, lovable nonsense, and I love it. If it does Heated Rivalry numbers it will be because there are more heterosexual viewers in the world rather than because it brings any of Rivalry’s novelty with it, but it deserves whatever success it finds.
