Lessons on race, identity at ‘Ackley’ high
Acorn TV puts a new spin on the high school series, by adding a contemporary spin that sets “Ackley Bridge” apart from, say, “Heathers” or “DeGrassi.”
The series, whose six-episode first season is available on the streaming service on Monday, Feb. 26, focuses on a newly merged school in a Yorkshire town where the white and Asian populations don’t have much to do with each other. Now, the kids of each part of the community are forced to co-exist in a new high school, and needless to say, it doesn’t go smoothly.
The series, created by Malcolm Campbell, Kevin Erlis and Ayub Khan-Din, is as much about the teachers as the students. The school’s head teacher, Mandy Carter (Jo Joyner), is married to phys ed teacher Steve Bell (Paul Nicholls), which makes things bumpy on both the personal and professional levels.
Emma Keane (Liz White) is rather a mess, arriving late on the first day of school wearing flip-flops and having just shaved her legs in the back seat of a taxicab. In class, she’s a rule-breaker, which doesn’t sit well with Mandy. She also has to deal with her daughter, Chloe (Fern Deacon), who was thrown out of her dad’s house for pushing his pregnant new wife.
The class bad girl is Missy Booth (Poppy Lee Friar), who actually has an Asian friend named Nasreen Paracha (Amy-Leigh Hickman), but the two have a falling out and Missy seeks revenge by telling high school hunk Cory (Sam Rhetman) that she’ll sleep with him if he seduces Nasreen. The wild card in the bunch is prankster Jordan Wilson (Samuel Bottomley), who is an equal-opportunity disrupter, calling himself a “revert” and showing up to school with a hajib around his head.
The series has an appealing mix of drama and humor, while at the same time exploring the themes of individual identity on a number of levels. In addition to exploring cultural identity through the forced blending of two ethnic groups, “Ackley” also explores personal and sexual identity. But don’t worry: You’ll be adequately engaged with the characters and the interwoven story lines to feel as though you’re sitting in a pew and not on your sectional.