If you've spent as many years writing about streaming shows and movies as I have, you'll have started to discern quite obvious patterns in the ways that the best streaming services create new shows. Whether that means strip-mining genres for new stories, or trusting authors to make them fresh shows, there are a bunch of approaches that clearly work.
Prime Video's new show Sterling Point seems to almost be a greatest-hits album for these tactics – it mixes genres up, has a hit author behind it, a beautiful young cast and some big twists to share. Its first trailer has me pretty convinced that it'll also do major numbers when it drops on 5 August.
The show stars Ella Rubin as Annie, a young woman who discovers that her family's history is way more complicated than she assumed. When her grandfather passes away, he leaves Annie and her brother a house in rural Canada, and entreats them to visit it in his will. Annie does so, and discovers a lovely little community, although she can't figure out why her grandfather was up there.
Things become clearer, though, when she discovers another young woman in the cottage – Ramona (Amélie Hoeferle), who claims that she was left the property by her grandfather. They soon realise that they share a mother, but from different fathers, and it looks like that'll almost instantly stir up a lot of distrust and confusion in their families.
That's quite a melodramatic family-oriented plot, but the show clearly also has some steamy romances to offer up, too, with both Ramona and Annie interested in other young people that they meet in Sterling Point (the area that gives the show its name). On top of that, the mysteries about their shared mother clearly won't end with that first big revelation.
It looks like Sterling Point will blend together romance, mystery, drama and even some thriller elements to make a show that could really sink its hooks into people, if I'm any judge of a trailer. It'll be out in around a month's time, so let's set a reminder and see how it does.
