Sterling Point Review: Another Endearing and Addictive Young-Adult Canadian Lakeside Drama

Prime Video’s Sterling Point is the second young adult-themed drama to use a picturesque Canadian waterfront as its backdrop, allowing its characters to live life rather than be swept up in it. With Amazon also ordering the YA-adjacent Rose Hill, the show may be part of an emerging Great White North trilogy. More importantly, its younger characters are written with rare nuance, thoughtfulness, and empathy.

Though fairly predictable, Sterling Point is a charming young-adult mystery, elevated by an appealing cast and writing that makes the series surprisingly addictive for its target audience.

The story follows Annie (Anora‘s Ella Rubin), a precocious seventeen-year-old with a boyfriend whom she is patiently waiting to come out so she can break up with him. However, Annie has bigger things on her mind this summer, including how she is going to spend her time. After being denied admission to Warden’s summer program, something she never expected to happen.

What is Prime Video’s Sterling Point about?

Annie’s father Steven (Mark Duplass) passively comforts her, but she is still disappointed. However, she begins to focus on her grandfather Gordon’s passing and the memory of her mother, who passed away from cancer when she was a child. The grandparent she never met left her and her callow, self-involved twin brother, Connor (Keen Ruffalo), letters and an Island.

Yes, that’s right, but not in the Caribbean. Instead, it is a stunning piece of property in Ontario, Canada, called Sterling Point. Annie breaks into her father’s safe and finds letters Gordon wrote over the years. She leaves a note for her father that she went to Thailand, sneaking away to the land of ketchup chips, overt politeness, and maple syrup that is practically currency.

When she arrives, she meets Ellis (Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie), the son of marina operator Joe (The Walking Dead‘s Jeffrey Dean Morgan). Annie rubs elbows with the local townspeople, as well as the wealthy newcomers whose amenity migration has transformed the town’s small-town charm. One of them, Rory (Pressure’s Daniel Quinn-Toye), has a son who takes a shine to Annie.

Prime Video’s Sterling Point Review

Sterling Point comes from Megan Park (My Old Ass), who infuses the series with intrigue by introducing Annie to the shock of her life: a half-sister, Ramona (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes‘s Amélie Hoeferle), she never knew existed, who is the spitting image of her mother. There are many more young-adult twists and turns along the way. You can see some of them coming, which is fine, because the characters make you care.

Yet, the writing is solid enough to make you question your assumptions or, at the very least, suspend your disbelief. Along the way, the antipathy between Rubin’s Annie and Hoeferle’s Ramona fuels both the comedic and dramatic beats. Rubin has a real knack for anxious awkwardness that is both funny and endearing. Hoeferle is the wild card, bringing a magnetic presence and emotional depth that can be surprisingly moving.

As I said, the series is enjoyable because of its younger characters, who possess more depth and nuance and display greater maturity, empathy, and love for one another than the adult characters, who are one-note at best. The characters played by Galaxy Quest‘s Missi Pyle and Mark Duplass exist primarily to move the plot forward. If anything, Park and the writers could have veiled their intentions with greater care.

Is Prime Video’s Sterling Point worth watching?

The great Jeffrey Dean Morgan has more to sink his teeth into, but he is handcuffed because of a fairly predictable plot structure. IT also doesn’t help that there are very few consequences handed out. That being said, Keen Ruffalo, the son of Mark Ruffalo, is very funny as the series’ comic foil, often surprising with subtle comic timing, which can be irreverent and heartfelt. Bo Bragason is also the series’ breakout character that deserves a spinoff of her own.

Is Sterling Point worth watching? Yes, but mainly for fans of the genre, and expectations should remain modest. Others may need more patience as the plot gradually unfolds. Once it does, however, the show develops an endearing and addictive quality that most series lack. Still, there are eyebrow-raising plot developments I cannot discuss that made my head hurt as I tried to connect the family lines.

For once, I found myself hoping for some AncestryDNA product placement.

You can stream the complete first season of Sterling Point exclusively on Prime Video on August 5th! All eight episodes were screened for this review.

Sterling Point Review: Another Endearing and Addictive Young-Adult Canadian Lakeside Drama