TV loves a good monster. The Last Of Us presents the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. In Stranger Things, supernatural beings inhabit a hostile alternate dimension. But the new Stan series Bad Behaviour confronts us with a more everyday terror: teenage girls.
Based on the 2015 memoir by Australian writer Rebecca Starford, the new four-part series is set at the “wilderness campus” of an exclusive boarding school, where 15-year-olds spend a year living together in dormitory rooms with minimal adult supervision.
Secluded in the Australian bush, they are meant to be building resilience in a Duke of Edinburgh-style program for children of the wealthy. But as new scholarship student Joanna “Jo” McKenzie (Jana McKinnon) quickly learns, it is an enclave where the base level brutality of single-sex high school is amplified and able to flourish to the point of – in one instance – violent and public self-harm. A horrifying premise indeed.
At Silver Creek, Jo initially bonds with another scholarship student, Alice Kang (Yerin Ha). But eager to stay on the right side of their dormitory’s coolly assured queen bee, Portia (Markella Kavenagh), and feeling that she either must bully or be bullied, Jo’s allegiances soon shift. The show cuts between Jo’s time at boarding school and 10 years later in Melbourne, where a chance encounter with an adult Alice Kang dredges up memories of the past – leaving Jo, and viewers, wondering who the bad guy really was. An undercurrent of sexual tension between two characters adds a layer of complexity too.
Former teenage girls, be warned: Bad Behaviour is triggeringly adept at capturing the casual cruelty of high school. The show nails that teenage desperation for approval, the pathetic dance of trying to follow rules that are unwritten and forever shifting, and the way a bully’s good graces can shine upon you one moment and then be revoked seemingly without cause – it took me right back to year 10.
Markella Kavenagh’s Portia is a villain for the ages, a girl who manipulates all around her with ease and could teach a masterclass in gaslighting. Ha is great as Alice, who cops much of the worst of the torment. McKinnon’s Jo is less effective, though she does have a difficult line to walk – someone your heart hurts for, but not innocent enough to get behind. That may be the point of a show that interrogates shame, memory and self-perception – but having a hero who is so hard to untangle makes for a somewhat unsatisfying viewing.
Starford’s book documents her own time at an elite Victorian high school (yes, the wilderness campus is a real thing and yes, it still exists). It’s a very faithful adaptation – perhaps to its own detriment. While the memoir was well-written, its tension is largely interior, documenting the subtle manoeuvres and quiet devastations of high school bullying – and without any of the big, explosive moments that lend themselves to gripping TV.
Sure enough, the show feels like it is lacking action. Had the adaptation expanded on the premise of the book, it might have led the story somewhere more eventful. Instead, it feels like Bad Behaviour tries to substitute its lack of real plot points with attempts at emotionally moving moments that swing but don’t really connect – like the arc about Jo’s tortured relationship with her mum, which feels a little shoehorned in.
Watching Bad Behaviour, it’s hard not to cast your mind back to the thematically similar Mean Girls. But while that sacred text explored the toxic dynamics of teenage girls with humour, there’s no laughs or lightness to be had with Bad Behaviour. I would have loved to see the discomforting series taken into the realm of the psychological thriller; a Babadook for all-girls schools. But Bad Behaviour feels like it’s waiting for a big reveal that never comes, unfurling a story that doesn’t quite draw blood.
Bad Behaviour is streaming in Australia on Stan
