Looking For Alaska: The Hulu Miniseries
“If people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.”
I recently sat down to watch Hulu’s new mini-series, an adaptation of John Green’s first book Looking For Alaska. I first read the novel around twelve years ago and really enjoyed it. It’s an emotional book, with a cast of fascinating characters and a great coming-of-age story. It remains my favourite book so far from John Green. With all that happens along the way, it’s impossible for your heart not to break for pretty much all of the characters in this story at some point. Despite this, the tone is often dry and funny too.
Looking for Alaska is an adaptation of the much-loved first novel by John Green, perhaps the most well-known YA fiction writer. For various reasons, it has taken 14 years to bring it to the screen. The novel Looking For Alaska by John Green, was published in 2005, and that same year Josh Schwartz the creator of The O.C, signed on to write and direct a feature adaptation, but it didn’t work out. Now, at last the long-awaited adaptation has finally come to be, not as a feature film but as an eight-episode mini-series on Hulu.
The series is structured around a before and after storytelling device, first used in the show’s opening moments: a terrible car crash looms, and the show counts the days leading up to it and the days that follow. Though the crash is the turning point of the plot, it doesn’t come until quite late in the story, so the show mostly explores the events leading up to that moment.
Seeking to gain a deeper perspective on life, teenager Miles Halter enrols at Culver Creek Academy, a boarding school in Alabama. On his first day, he gets a new nickname, a best friend, some enemies and makes a deal with Alaska Young. The friendships grow, Miles settles into life at Culver Creek and there are some lovely moments as we see the relationships between the main characters really blossom. After the unexpected tragedy, the final part of the story comprises of Miles and his friends trying to make sense of what they have been through. The performances of the mostly young cast are excellent, the series really captures the feel of John Green’s writing and in my opinion, offers a very faithful adaptation of the original book.
Lately it seems that nearly every teen drama now has to have a larger-than-life twist, whether it’s murder mysteries, supernatural abilities, highly sexualized themes, drug use, or in Riverdale’s case, all of the above. Sure, there is a death in Looking For Alaska, and the characters try to make sense of it, but it is not a mystery series. The show is a rare series in which a story is adapted for the screen by exactly the right set of hands who treat it with the level of respect it so requires.
This young adult hit is funny and endearing, a blend of Dawson’s Creek with The O.C if it was set in Alabama. The cinematography is beautiful and the the atmosphere at Culver Creek is mostly relaxed. There is a lot of dialogue in Looking For Alaska that is bound to make you say “That’s not how teenagers really talk.” However, the characters are so interesting, likeable and complex that I feel this can be forgiven. For people like myself, who grew up on those shows, the nostalgia element is strong and in 2019 this show really stands out from the rest.
Maybe this is what appealed to me most about the throwback teen drama. Looking For Alaska functions well as a series for both a contemporary teen audience and an audience that would’ve been teens when these characters were. This is your standard, tried and true, coming-of-age story, and it’s really worth a watch.
Looking for Alaska is an adaptation of the much-loved first novel by John Green, perhaps the most well-known YA fiction writer. For various reasons, it has taken 14 years to bring it to the screen. The novel Looking For Alaska by John Green, was published in 2005, and that same year Josh Schwartz the creator of The O.C, signed on to write and direct a feature adaptation, but it didn’t work out. Now, at last the long-awaited adaptation has finally come to be, not as a feature film but as an eight-episode mini-series on Hulu.
The series is structured around a before and after storytelling device, first used in the show’s opening moments: a terrible car crash looms, and the show counts the days leading up to it and the days that follow. Though the crash is the turning point of the plot, it doesn’t come until quite late in the story, so the show mostly explores the events leading up to that moment.
Seeking to gain a deeper perspective on life, teenager Miles Halter enrols at Culver Creek Academy, a boarding school in Alabama. On his first day, he gets a new nickname, a best friend, some enemies and makes a deal with Alaska Young. The friendships grow, Miles settles into life at Culver Creek and there are some lovely moments as we see the relationships between the main characters really blossom. After the unexpected tragedy, the final part of the story comprises of Miles and his friends trying to make sense of what they have been through. The performances of the mostly young cast are excellent, the series really captures the feel of John Green’s writing and in my opinion, offers a very faithful adaptation of the original book.
Lately it seems that nearly every teen drama now has to have a larger-than-life twist, whether it’s murder mysteries, supernatural abilities, highly sexualized themes, drug use, or in Riverdale’s case, all of the above. Sure, there is a death in Looking For Alaska, and the characters try to make sense of it, but it is not a mystery series. The show is a rare series in which a story is adapted for the screen by exactly the right set of hands who treat it with the level of respect it so requires.
This young adult hit is funny and endearing, a blend of Dawson’s Creek with The O.C if it was set in Alabama. The cinematography is beautiful and the the atmosphere at Culver Creek is mostly relaxed. There is a lot of dialogue in Looking For Alaska that is bound to make you say “That’s not how teenagers really talk.” However, the characters are so interesting, likeable and complex that I feel this can be forgiven. For people like myself, who grew up on those shows, the nostalgia element is strong and in 2019 this show really stands out from the rest.
Maybe this is what appealed to me most about the throwback teen drama. Looking For Alaska functions well as a series for both a contemporary teen audience and an audience that would’ve been teens when these characters were. This is your standard, tried and true, coming-of-age story, and it’s really worth a watch.