For Australians of a certain age, the mere whisper of the Heartbreak High theme music – all early 90s synth tubular bells and surging guitar – is enough to bring on apoplexies of nostalgia. If you were a teen or tween between the years of 1994 and 1999, the daily half hour spent with the students of Hartley High, a rough and tumble state school in Sydney, was the definition of event television.
The idea of a Heartbreak High “reboot”, then, is enough to strike fear into the hearts of Australians staring down their midlife crises and loath to let their foundational text evolve to find a new audience. It’s a tension that the new series’ writer and creator, Hannah Carroll Chapman, is acutely aware of. “I was obsessed with the show when I was a teen; the opening credits music is still a dopamine hit for me,” Chapman says. “I [re]watched every single episode before we got into the plot room.”
