Geek Girl: Like The Rustle Of Fabric On Ramp, It Just Swishes By

geek girl like the rustle of fabric on ramp it just swishes by

Netflix’s 10-part series Geek Girl is silly fun. It is decked up in frivolity, but no less enjoyable for it. Foolishness, like candyfloss, can be enjoyable, provided it is ingested in manageable proportions. The episodes of Geek Girl are brief and bubbly. The series, based on the young-adult novel by Holly Smale, has a snappy no-artifice look and feel to it.

The actors are no Streeps and Brandos. But they somehow seem to stretch their performing skills to the extent that this breezy bubbly broth requires. The protagonist Emily Carey, who began her career playing the younger versions of Gal Gadot and Angelina Jolie in Wonder Woman and Lara Croft, handles her first semi-adult role with disarming charm.

Emily plays Harriet Manners, an aspiring musician lugging her guitar to school as her mother doesn’t want it lying around in the house as a reminder of Harriet’s failure. Harriet is hooted and heckled by all her schoolmates, except one. Harriet’s best friend is Natalie played by Rochelle Harrington who has oodles of insta-charm. Natalie’s is the kind of face and personality which lends itself well to social media.

But Natalie wants to be a model. Badly. There is a bit of sisterly solidarity between the two girls when Harriet refuses to audition without her best friend for a big break in a leading modelling agency. Sadly Harriet is selected, Natalie is not.

Admirably, the series doesn’t make a song-and-dance about betrayal in the friendship. Its concerns are never more than skin deep and it makes no bones about it. This is the series’ USP; it clings to the surface with casual grace.

There are passages in the storytelling which are incurably charming. Alas, a majority of the peccadillos in the modelling world are shrunken to two the modelling agency’s two right-hand persons Wilbur and Betty are as irksome as the wicked stepsister on Cinderella. though far less evil and far more feisty.

More than the modelling minute, it is Harriet’s parents and close friends who bring colour to the ‘chic’, especially Harriet’s dad played with endearing affection by that fabulous British actor Tim Downie. There is a little scene tucked away in a corner where the father hands over a lunchbox to the daughter with her favourite food just as she likes it.

If God is the details then Geek Girl gets a godly push from its small moments. The larger picture is not as inviting. But if you are in the mood for some lightweight storytelling about girl power, you have come to the right place.

The one frown point in the comely confection is the normalization of campus bullying. This show not only normalizes bullying, it even glamorizes it by showing it to be an integral part of the protagonist’s growing-up year, something like…if you don’t ache you can’t bake. Now, that’s hard to take!