Hannah Wells catches Garrett Graham in the shower three weeks into the fall semester at Briar University, and the moment kicks off Off Campus, the new YA romance drama based on Elle Kennedy’s bestselling book series. From there, the show moves into a bargain between a classical music major and the school’s NHL-bound team captain, with Ella Bright playing Hannah and Belmont Cameli as Garrett.
Season 1 adapts The Deal, the first book in the series, and the eight-episode run sticks close to the opposites-attract setup. Hannah works one of her jobs cleaning the men’s locker rooms at the campus stadium, then agrees to help Garrett with a midterm in hopes that time with him will get her crush, Justin Kohl, to help her write a song for a scholarship. Justin is played by Josh Heuston.
The show is set at the fictional Northeastern Briar University, where Garrett and his friends are hockey players and frat bros. That gives the series a ready-made college world, and Louisa Levy’s TV adaptation makes good use of the social mix around them, with Mika Abdalla as Allie Hayes, Antonio Cipriano as Logan, Jalen Thomas Brooks as Tucker and Stephen Kalyn as Dean. The series also makes room for the bond between men that keeps the group from feeling like a string of stock types.
What gives Off Campus some of its edge is that it does not sand off the harder parts of the story. The series discusses sexual assault and consent, and it also shows healthy sexual encounters and practices. That matters because the YA romance genre can sometimes flatten intimacy into suggestion; here, the show is more direct about what respect looks like on screen.
There is still a messier side to the pilot, including an excessive display of breasts that feels out of step with the rest of the series. And while the show is mostly solid, it is also predictable, leaning hard on the familiar machinery of the genre. That predictability is likely to invite comparisons with HBO Max’s queer romance Heated Rivalry, another series working in adjacent emotional territory.
Even so, Off Campus does what a first season needs to do: it introduces the couple, gives the supporting cast room to breathe and turns a college hookup story into something with a little more shape. The question is not whether the show understands its formula. It does. The question is whether later episodes can push past it, or whether the eight-episode first season will remain content to play the book exactly as fans expect.
