Boarders review: Cheeky school comedy mocks the British class system
Despite Australia’s historical and monarchical connections to the United Kingdom, some elements of British culture remain so alien.
We’ll never really get behind steamed fruit puddings, imperial measurements and its stultifying system of class. But that doesn’t mean they don’t remain objects of curiosity. How long is a yard, really? And why do people want to do extra maths when 100 is such a nice, round number?
Australia likes to believe the myth of an egalitarian country (we’re not), but there’s no denying that when compared to the rigidity of British institutions of old money and bloodlines, we’re basically a utopia.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.That’s probably why boarding school stories have always remained fascinating to outsiders — it’s as strange and unknowable as a Tatooine cantina.
Harry Potter would’ve been different enough even without the magic and wizards. The idea that kids are packed off to a castle, study Latin, play rugby, do fencing, and exist in this specific, inescapable ecosystem with its own rules and power dynamics is fertile ground for storytelling.
Enid Blyton knew it, and her six Malory Towers books (remember the tempestuous Darrell Rivers and the snobby Gwendoline?) were a glimpse into a world that held endless fascination for anyone growing up halfway around the globe in the suburbs of Australia.
That’s not a bad thing. The inhabitants of these rarified worlds really allow anyone else to join their closed society.
That culture clash is at the heart of Boarders, a series that, as its name implies, takes place in a British boarding school called St Gilbert’s.
The protagonists are five black teenagers (Josh Tedeku, Jodie Campbell, Myles Kamwendo, Aruna Jalloh and Sekou Diaby) who have been recruited as part of a scholarship program after the school lands itself in a spot of bother over a video of its privileged sons debasing a homeless man by pouring 100-quid champagne over him.
Chosen for their gifts (Toby is a prodigy of languages, which he has heretofore used to barter with Iranian shopkeepers or watch Japanese films while Omar’s artistic talents manifest in his love of comic books) as well as their ethnic background, it’s a culture clash.
The school’s diversity team froths over the possibility of exploiting them for its promo materials — and also to just actually have kids from different backgrounds — while the school’s headmaster has to contend with the barely-veiled coded racism of the school board chair whose awful son was in that offending video.
The first couple of episodes deal with some heavier beats including violence and bullying, the series then settles into a more easygoing rhythm that leans more into silly antics and the quirks of boarding schools and the weird rich kids that go there.
The great thing about these new students is that they’re not trying to fit in, they’re trying to make this anachronistic institution bend to them. The steak of defiance makes for far more interesting viewing.
In telling this story about black London teens claiming their space in the hierarchy of a sandstone posh boarding school teeming with prestige, Boarders mocks the racial and class politics of modern Britain, which is never as modern as it thinks itself to be.
And it has a lot of fun and cheek doing it.
