‘Boarders’ Has The Potential To Become Tubi’s First Original Hit Series — If People Watch It

In an unforgiving TV landscape where promising new scripted series are being canceled left and right, it can sometimes feel hopeless to invest time in a show that could be ― and is often very quickly ― on the chopping block, especially when it’s a streaming platform original.

Hulu’s “This Fool,” Netflix’s “The Brothers Sun,” and Max’s “The Flight Attendant” and “Rap Sh!t” are just a few of the many streaming titles that were axed this year alone (and we’re only at the top of March). And they’re all from the major platforms.

So it’s intriguing and maybe a little “risky” (which is industry-speak that has little to do with artistry and everything to do with Hollywood’s innovation-averse climate) for a somewhat outlier platform to dip into original programming.

But apparently the newly rebranded Tubi, an impressively vast free platform that draws considerably less fanfare than its aforementioned counterparts, is risk-tolerant. Since 2021, it has invested in a substantial number of original titles. Most have been movies, like last year’s “Cinnamon,” starring Pam Grier; many center Black talent; and practically all fly under the radar.

Some of that is due to a lack of quality. “Cinnamon,” for instance, is among myriad C-level and D-level original titles on the platform. But like we’ve seen before, it sometimes takes years for a platform to find its footing with original programming. Tubi’s newest series, “Boarders,” though, has all the makings to become the platform’s first original hit this year.

It is produced by Studio Lambert, a British television company, in association with All3Media International for the BBC. It premiered in the U.K. last month. Tubi has branded it as the streamer’s original series, which will premiere Friday on the platform for U.S. audiences.

“Boarders,” written and created by Daniel Lawrence Taylor, a BAFTA nominee for 2017’s “Timewasters,” fills the void left by Netflix’s “Sex Education” in that they both center on horny high school students in the U.K. who grapple with life, love and friendships. But it’s the complexities of friendship and success that help make “Boarders” such an intriguing watch.

That and the fact that it centers on Black students, particularly in a country that’s always had, at the very least, an awkward relationship with race. “Boarders” brings that often passive-aggressive tension right to the fore from the first episode.

The series begins as a forked narrative, introducing the protagonists — Leah (Jodie Campbell), Jaheim (Josh Tedeku), Omar (Myles Kamwendo), Toby (Sekou Diaby) and Femi (Aruna Jalloh) — and, briefly, their home lives. They have very little in common except that they are all gifted students who have been overlooked and/or cast aside because they’re Black.

That sets up comedic exchanges early on in the series when the quintet soon unite on the way to St. Gilberts, one of the most prestigious (and almost exclusively white) boarding schools in Britain to which they’ve landed scholarships.

Despite their brilliance, there is a hitch to this new scholarship: The school administrators are scrambling to fix their image following a controversial leaked video featuring one of their students. They think Leah, Jaheim, Omar, Toby and Femi could also help them look better.

The friends connect over the fact that they’re all struggling to navigate their parents’ and guardians’ high expectations and decide to stick together. They also recognize that they’re in a position to control the school’s fate while contending with being branded as the “charity cases.” So they cause a stir as soon as they enter the school gates.

With a premise like that, you might think you can guess what happens in the series. Something to the effect of the protagonists experiencing one racist encounter after the next, calling out their classmates on their ignorance until something dramatic or revolutionarily occurs to conveniently upend then neatly conclude the whole story.

And to be fair, there are a few moments that fit into some of those assumptions. Yes, the white kids are terrible and privileged. One even has the caucacity to say “I’ve never seen a Black penis before” when she meets Jaheim.

Yes, Leah quickly makes it her mission to have a racist artwork removed from the school walls. And, yes, by the end of the season, some tensions are more or less resolved. None of that is where the show actually thrives.

Rather, it’s the characters and performances — including Taylor’s role as the protagonists’ counselor — that prevent “Boarders” from being rudimentary or one-dimensional.

Together with co-writers Ryan Calais Cameron, Emma Dennis-Edwards and Yemi Oyefuwa, Taylor weaves a taut, six-episode season with loosely defined yet recognizable young characters that are continually shaped by new life experiences.

They’re not all the way virtuous, as we’ve seen too often with Black characters. And they’re not flattened stereotypes, either. At times, they might even be frustrating for some audiences to watch.

The characters are nuanced and often undercut their efforts to be the proverbial change they want to see in the world as they, for instance, oblige the objectifying white girl. Or befriend the biracial Black girl (Assa Kanoute) who initially wants nothing to do with you because you’re Black and dark-skinned. Or ditch your brown crush for your outright racist white roommate.

Or, in the case of Taylor’s Gus, continue to guide young charges into a system of behavior that teeters on respectability politics that calls for swallowing microaggressions and, sometimes, their own pride in the process. Because not everything is that black and white.

Much of what happens in “Boarders” highlights the natural contradictions many young Black people possess as they maneuver the lines of who they want to be, who they’re expected to be and who they actually are.

On top of all that is ties to community — one being what they established back at home among their own, another that they created among the other Black students at St. Gilbert’s and the most complicated one with their counterparts at school.

Made light on its feet at times with a fun and rhythmic score and grounded by the keen direction of Ethosheia Hylton and Sarmad Masud, “Boarders” is funny, human and accessible. And, most important, it’s binge-worthy, which could work in Tubi’s favor.

Particularly considering there’s been little promotion for the series, it will be interesting to see whether American audiences will watch it, much less fall for it. Potential definitely won’t be to blame.

“Boarders” is available to stream on Tubi on Friday.