‘Crew Girl’ Review: Netflix’s Latest YA Sports Drama Checks All the Expected Boxes, but Not Much More
The Hollywood Reporter's review of Netflix's new YA series "Crew Girl" finds the show adequate but unremarkable, ticking off familiar genre boxes without rising above them. The series follows Teagan, an elite teenage rower who joins her new school's varsity boys' crew team as coxswain, and blends competitive rowing with wealthy-school drama, family rivalries and a love triangle, but the critic argues that thin characterisation and an underdeveloped world stop it becoming truly engaging.
The review praises the show's genuine focus on the sport itself, distinguishing it from other YA dramas that treat athletics as a backdrop, and highlights some warm team-bonding moments among Teagan's crewmates. However, it criticises the central love triangle between Teagan and teammates Josh and Cam as formulaic and unconvincing, and notes that the writers struggle to build out life beyond the boathouse, with even unrelated subplots looping back to rowing.
- Netflix's "Crew Girl" is a competent but forgettable YA sports drama.
- Focuses on rowing more than most similar shows, to its credit.
- Underdeveloped characters and a clichéd love triangle hold it back.
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Rowing dramas don't usually get taken this seriously on screen, and that's the starting point for Crew Girl, a new Netflix teen series. It centres on Teagan, a talented teenage rower who transfers schools and ends up as coxswain, the person who steers and directs the boat, for the boys' varsity crew team. Around that setup, the show layers in familiar teen-drama elements: rivalries between wealthy families, school politics and a romantic triangle involving two of Teagan's teammates.
The story matters mainly as a piece of entertainment coverage rather than breaking news: it's part of the crowded field of young-adult sports dramas that streaming services like Netflix regularly produce to attract teenage and young-adult viewers. Rowing is a less common backdrop for this genre than sports like football or basketball, which is part of what makes the show notable to critics and audiences alike.
The Hollywood Reporter's review, which prompted this piece, assesses how well the series executes on these familiar genre elements, weighing its handling of the sport itself against its character work and storylines.