Jumping into a crisp lake, morning sunshine streaming through lush green leaves, cicadas buzzing in the hot summer air. These quintessential cottage-country vibes are the setting for Sterling Point, Prime Video’s latest word-of-mouth teen drama, which takes place on a fictional island in Muskoka, Canada. There, away from the buzz of the city and cell-phone towers, summer is what you always imagined it to be, and there may be no better hideaway in which to question what you want out of life.
Creator Megan Park, along with co-showrunners Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage of The O.C. and Gossip Girl, knew what they were doing. The scenic Muskoka Lakes region also served as the backdrop for Park’s acclaimed 2024 coming-of-age indie film My Old Ass. The challenge with Sterling Point was to take what made that film click, the romance of finding yourself in cottage country, and expand it into a series able to sit alongside Prime’s other summer offerings.
What sets it apart is a satisfying balance of soap-opera convention and escapist realism, a combination that offers a refreshing take on the teen drama and, arguably, punches above both its weight and its target age demographic.
The protagonist, Annie, played by Ella Rubin, is a 17-year-old overachiever who lives with her twin brother, Connor, played by Keen Ruffalo, and their adoptive father, played by Jay Duplass, in New York. She is about to enter her senior year of high school when she learns of her grandfather’s death. In a letter her father is reluctant to share, she discovers that the grandfather is leaving his cottage, and the entire island on which it sits, to her and her brother. He also wants Annie to reunite with someone. “Find her,” he writes.
It is that mix of inheritance-drama intrigue and sun-dappled atmosphere that has powered the show’s summer word of mouth. Understated where its peers are flashy, Sterling Point trades on mood as much as plot, and in doing so has quietly become one of the season’s most talked-about watches.
