Stream It Or Skip It: ‘High Tides’ On Netflix, About A Group Of Teens Finding Out About Themselves One Summer On The Belgian Seaside

Teen coming-of-age dramas tend to depend on two things: Good-looking characters and aspirational settings. A new Belgian drama on Netflix takes place in a seaside locale and has lots and lots of good-looking young actors. Sure, there’s some sex, some love triangles, some “rich people being awful” stuff going on in the background. But the other two things are prominent; do you really need anything more?

HIGH TIDES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A teen drinking in a club. He’s contemplating everything that went on that summer. Then his mother comes and asks why he called her there. “They know,” he says.

The Gist: “A few weeks earlier.” We see Louise Bastyens (Pommelien Thijs) wake up next to Alex van Daal (Willem De Schryver), then run back to her parents’ house. She seems to be in training for some athletic event, as she’s keeping time. In the meantime, Daan (Eliyha Altena) arrives in the seaside town of Knokke-Heist with his mother Melissa (Anna Drijver), and they settle in a rented trailer in the less-than-wealthy part of town. Melissa not only has to “find” an extra €120 in the car, and she gives the rental agent one of many IDs she has in her wallet.

Daan takes a liking to their neighbor Anouk (Manouk Pluis), and takes some surreptitious photos of her from the window of their new temporary home. Alex’s mother Elonore (Ruth Becquart), whose mental health in on a razor’s edge, fires the nanny when she thinks he’s sleeping with her husband Patrick (Geert Van Rampelberg).

Taking a job at a local seaside restaurant run by the crusty Jaques (Gene Bervoets), Daan immediately has a run in with Alex, who sees Louise eyeing Daan when he shows up for the job. Daan gets fired, but when he gets home, he has a moment with Anouk, complaining about Alex and the “rich, arrogant bastards” who seem to dominate in Knokke. Anouk invites him to the club where she’s a bartender.

At a gallery owned by the mother of Alex’s friend Margaux (Ayana Doucouré), Patrick bids over €1 million on a painting, but Alex finds out that when he goes to Margaux’s mother’s office to finalize the sale, his dad is doing much more with her than just exchanging signatures.

At the club where Anouk works, Daan attempts to get in but fails; when Alex sees him, he feels bad about what happened at the restaurant and tells the bouncer that Daan is with him and his group, leading to a night where there’s some bathroom sex and some nude swimming at sunrise. In the meantime, Melissa works the gallery showing as a server and finds out that the van Daals need a new nanny.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? High Tides (original title: Knokke Off) feels like Dawson’s Creek meets The OC meets The White Lotus.

Our Take: High Tides, created by Anthony Van Biervliet, is pretty much setting up as a story about a working-class kid whose mom has some grifter-esque tendencies trying to infiltrate his way into a group of rich teenagers in sunny Knokke. He may have some ulterior motives, as may his mother, but he may just want to do it for the sport of it, or that he’s attracted to Louise and wants to get back at Alex for being a smug dick. But it sure seems like this is going to be a pretty standard “coming of age” story where Daan and Alex will regularly come into conflict as Daan gets to know Alex and his group better.

Will there be some more backstories? Sure. There is something amiss in the van Daal family, and it doesn’t seem like Louise’s family life is the happiest, either. But the adults’ lives are still pretty vaguely defined at this point; if they get clarified later, it should make the teens’ stories more intriguing.

There also seems to be multiple love triangles being set up, given that both Louise and Anouk are attracted to Daan, and Louise is already dating Alex while lusting after Daan. There’s also going to perhaps be some issues of race and class being addressed in this series, as it is with any series featuring unhappy rich people.

What we’re not sure about is how much we care. The episodes are fairly short and well-paced, but at this point the characters seem a bit one-dimensional. As we focus in on the core characters, though, we hope that will change.

Sex and Skin: There’s a bathroom sex scene, but most of the nudity comes at the end, when Daan and Alex’s group all run naked into the surf as the sun comes up.

Parting Shot: See the section above; lots of nude teens running into the early-morning surf.

Sleeper Star: Manouk Pluis is sexy as hell as Anouk, which is sometimes hard to pull off. We hope to see her more as the show goes forward as a counterpoint to Daan’s aspirational attraction to Louise.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Jacques asks Daan if he’s Surinamese, Daan responds, “Half,” then retorts, “Racist?” and Jacques comes back with, “Half,” and laughs.

Our Call: STREAM IT. There’s nothing egregiously bad about High Tides, but the story isn’t exactly revolutionary. The show’s success will depend on how good the characters are and their chemistry with each other.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.