(courtesy and (c) Netflix)
Is it possible to have your fairytale dream come true – even when you know don’t know at the time that it IS your fairytale dream – and keep your sense of self intact or does the former swallow the latter whole and you are left a wholly different person for better or worse?
That’s not the great existential question that Harrier Manners (Emily Carey) sets out to answer in Geek Girl when she’s discovered by modelling scout, Wilbur Evans (Emmanual Imani) – the dream after all belongs to her bestie forever Nat (Rochelle Harrington) and she has no desire to upend her life in that way; well, at least not initially – but one that quickly comes to consume her when what starts out as a fun diversion suddenly becomes a very serious option.
Getting that kind of opportunity handed to you is magically rare and wondrous thing and in some way Harriet understands this since she’s been party to Nat’s fervently expressed hopes and dreams for quite some time now but not even she fully appreciates what this unexpected life opportunity will do to her carefully constructed life.
It’s a life that has, until this point, stayed within carefully-ordered lanes, partly a result of Harriet’s neurodivergency – which is never directly spoken about as such but which is alluded to by some creatively-expressed (polar bears in rainforests get a mention) and earnest, emotionally-expressed conversations by people who often feel on the outer in a mainstream neurotypical world – but also a retreat to safer domestic waters after the death of her mother some years before.
In many ways Harriet has a safe and secure life – she’s loved and supported by her dad Richard (Tim Downie) and her stepmum Annabelle (Jemima Rooper), she’s got a BFF who loves her unconditionally and whom she loves right back, and she’s bright and gunning to become a paleontologist.
But, because she doesn’t fit the mainstream mold and doesn’t pick up any every social cue like the neurotypicals around her, Harriet, who is so delightfully sweet and honest that you can’t help but fall in love with her as a character, often finds herself bullied and misunderstood, most often by schoolyard bully Lexi (Mia Jenkins) and her henchpeople, and so she decides to take up Wilbur’s offer of modelling stardom because maybe by changing herself people will like her.
The fundamental message of Geek Girl, which is organically baked into the storyline and not even remotely delivered in any kind of blunt forced trauma way, is loving yourself as yourself and time and again Harriet has to navigate the central idea that she is wonderful as she is and shouldn’t change just because the bullies say she should.
Still, that’s a lesson that takes all 10 episodes of this first season to learn, and throughout the short-and-sweet storylines of Geek Girl – each episode is approximately half an hour and perfectly formed with no narrative fat on the bone of wasted time – which is based on the book series of the same name by Holly Smale, we witness lovely, honest, awkward Harriet slowly but surely coming into her own, with or without modelling.
It’s delightful to be a part of and to watch and that down to some fine, taut emotionally meaningful but funny writing, fine performances, most particularly by Carey and Imani but also Downie, Rooper and Liam Woodrum, who plays Harriet’s love interest, supermodel Nick Park, and a sense cosy sense that even though life throws some massively damaging curveballs a you, that’s it’s all survivable with your people and your community around you.
And that is likely what really makes Geek Girl such a truly binge-worthy joy to watch.
Harriet has to deal with a LOT, and not always well because it’s all new to her and she doesn’t do new well though she’s trying to remedy that, but she does it with such fearless honesty – even when she’s panicking or rampantly second-guessing herself, she always braver than many of those around her – and with such disarming truthfulness that you warm to her as the only true voice in the place.
Man neurotypicals treat the neurodivergent like there’s something wrong with them, but the truth is that they are often insightful and expressive in a way that our world of ritual and social strictures would do well to emulate.
Time and again, and possibly in a fairytale way that may not happen in the real world, Harriet’s gorgeously real honesty blows up all kinds of established patterns of behaviour for the better such as when archly and carefully curated fashion designer Yuji Lee (Sandra Yi Sencindiver) decides to dump her tightly controlled idea of who she wants and needs for her various campaigns and gives way to Harriet’s status quo-busting approach.
Harriet’s only 16 and still at high school so she’s not looking to bust the world apart, but she kind of does, simply by staying wonderfully and resolutely herself even when her world transforms massively and momentously around her.
She might be a model now but she still loves biology, enjoys watching daggy TV with Nat and she is not interested in all the glamour and lights/camera/action noise – partly because of her neurodivergency but also because she sees right through the falseness of it all – and chooses an informal date at a museum with Nick at one point in favour of milling around a gilded party with the fashion elite.
Harriet is a joy and a delight, a warm hug of brutal honesty who busts her way unwittingly through all kinds of expectations, assumptions and accepted behaviour and who defines life as a model and as a young woman on her terms, and who you adore because she wants all the things anyone wants but on the standard terms and if Geek Girl assures us of anything, it’s that being yourself is a necessity and a good thing and might just get you what you want in ways that suit you and not the host of people standing to the side who think they know you better that you do (pssst! They do not).
Geek Girl is currently streaming on Netflix.