Heartstopper series 2 on Netflix review: if only all teenage problems were resolved like this

Attending secondary school in the early Noughties, in the immediate wake of Section 28’s repeal, was not an enormous amount of fun if you were a queer teenager, to put it mildly. Any crumb of positive representation felt like a distant pipedream; instead, we were treated to the polar extremes of Naomi from Skins sobbing through a cat flap because she was so sad about being a lesbian, and t.A.T.u. frolicking around a playground in school uniforms while their homophobic peers tried to claw at them through a chainlink fence. Casually homophobic language was rife in the classrooms (everything from running to class to owning a particular pencil case was apparently “gay”). Those brave enough to come out were often bullied relentlessly. In light of all of this, Heartstopper is frequently touted as the dreamy school-days experience that was missing for past generations; an assessment I don’t necessarily agree with. Though the plotlines are handled with empathy that has been missing in the past, and there’s an underlying sense that acceptance will prevail, the queer students of Truham Grammar School still have a tough time.