Call it the Bridgerton effect, which itself was arguably the result of The Crown effect, but the Netflix algorithm is currently aimed toward the UK with moonier eyes than usual. Last month saw Lena Dunham recount her days as an American getting to grips with the realities of London in Too Much, and as production begins on yet another adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, here comes the sudsy romance My Oxford Year where the object of affection is England itself.
One might assume that a university-set film directed by The Inbetweeners creator Iain Morris would be a ribald comedy geared toward a younger male crowd, but My Oxford Year, based on a novel by Julia Whelan, picks sentiment over sauce. It’s a frothy, throwaway fantasy about another American hoping to find herself in another country, think of Emily in Paris but Anna in Oxford. Anna (in-house Netflix star Sofia Carson) is a working-class New Yorker who has decided to defer her job at Goldman Sachs for a year so that she can study at Oxford, indulging her love of literature before she disappears into a life of numbers.
