TV Show Review: Crew Girl

There has been an interesting phenomenon in YA-leaning romance dramas lately: adding sports into the mix. From smash hits Heated Rivalry to Off Campus, young people are falling in love with each other while competing for their sports and the ice rink is swapped for the racing boats in Netflix’s Canadian teen romance drama Crew Girl. 

Crew Girl, created by Vivian Lin, follows the story of sixteen-year-old Teagan Tao (Miku Martineau), a talented solo rower from California who dreams of going to the Olympics. Teagan’s life is upturned when her dad goes on the run after being accused of committing fraud. The rower and her mum Ella (Jessica Paré) are uprooted from sunny California and are forced to move to the other side of the country to Massachusetts to live in Ella’s parents’ dilapidated childhood home. Teagan is enrolled at ultra-rich private school Easton Prep which does not have a girls’ rowing team so to get time on the water and keep her dreams alive, she must join the all-boys team and act as their coxswain. Romance, rivalries and family secrets soon emerge as Teagan works hard to keep her status as a star rower. 

The opening episodes immediately establish that we are re-entering safe and familiar YA waters as we navigate a wealthy prep school, a love triangle quickly emerges between Teagan and two of the other main rowers, a nasty, popular prom queen type becomes enemy number one. The show is littered with archetypes with some executed better than others. Teagan’s tension between small town scholarship boy Cam (Kyle Clark) and privileged, arrogant Josh Regis as a love triangle is rather bland and functional but the bonds in the individual pairings are built at a steady, satisfying pace to create chemistry and connection. Britney (Sage Linder), Josh’s possessive girlfriend, remains mostly one-dimensional and flat until a surprise twist at the end of the series and the setting in which the drama is centred, Easton Prep, is sketched very lightly. 

Miku Martineau’s performance as Teagan is one of the highlights of the show as she performs a mixture of lighter and heavier material coming to terms with the loss of her father and becoming a team player. She is the coxswain of the cast, guiding them with her energy and enthusiasm. The show does a good job at highlighting the thrill and adrenaline of rowing, an underexplored sport in the YA catalogue with well-executed race and training sequences. One of the more compelling storylines that I wish had been dug into more was Ella’s journey readjusting to being back in her childhood small town and building her family up from nothing which is coupled with a sweet romance with Easton Prep rowing coach Matt Hayden (Thomas Cadrot). 

The finale of Crew Girl leaves a lot of plotlines ready to be tied up in season two which is good news as the show has been renewed for a second season. The moments in which it tries to go slightly deeper into its characters’ arcs are when the show is at its best and a second season will give it a chance to build the bond of the eight teen rowers that the show is driven by. 

Crew Girl season 1 is available to stream on Netflix now. 

3.5 out of 5 stars

Written by, Eve Hutchinson