Gap Year, a Brit series that rolled out Friday on Hulu, suggests the real rule of overseas travel for millennials is this: Don’t forget to pack all the neuroses that drove you to travel in the first place.
The streaming service’s eight-episode series begins with two young British pals, Dylan (Anders Hayward, top) and Sean (Ade Oyefeso, top), taking an adventure trip to Beijing.
They meet two American girls, May (Alice Lee, top) and Ashley (Brittney Wilson, top), partly through another British bloke, Greg (Tim Key, top, back row center), who has awkwardly attached himself to the girls.
The setup feels quite comfy for the millennial world, where taking a break from school or life to embark on an extended low-budget trip to exotic places seems as common as the iPhone 6S.
At a point when you don’t have a lot of other responsibilities, you throw your life in a backpack and have an adventure you couldn’t replicate 20 or 50 years later.
Unusual food, cheap accommodations and long bus rides don’t necessarily make for great television, but there’s one part of the experience that can: the unexpected social interactions.
That’s where Gap Year puts its chips, and against an attention-getting backdrop that includes places like The Great Wall of China, our Core Five generate so many soapy dramas they barely have time for Snapchat.
The suds start flowing as soon as we realize how many serious issues these folks have brought with them.
More often than not, that begins with Dylan, who contrary to what he told Sean, did not just want to experience another culture.
Nope, Dylan is actually stalking his ex, Lauren (Rachel Redford), who he knew was going to be in Beijing.
This revelation does not please Sean, who quit his job on the promise of having a bird hunt with his old pal. Now instead, he’s listening to Dylan read the excruciatingly awful poems he has been writing about his lost relationship.
May, meanwhile, has made this trip to please her rich, demanding helicopter mother. She’s the family rep at a wedding involving relatives she’s never met.
May is initially excited about seeing China, land of her ancestors until she is dismissed as a “banana” – yellow only on the surface.
Ethnic jokes crop up sparingly, graphic language, and sex jokes a little more often. The more common vernacular is bravado, like Greg telling everyone he’s married but separated and therefore a very cool catch.
That’s mostly a lie.
The least surprising development comes when all these young hormones, liberated from the constraints of home, family, and friends, start busting loose no matter how awkwardly their hosts behave.
Fun and carefree, however, it’s often not. Gap Year is one of those shows that’s more of a comedy to the audience than to its characters.
While we find things to like in most of the characters, they are, as a group, seemingly programmed to make repeated bad decisions, which leads to drama and stress in unfamiliar places, which leads to more bad decisions.
May’s family wedding, for instance, turns into a horror movie. It’s not as physically grueling as the Red Wedding on Game of Thrones, but psychologically it’s almost that cold.
Or, for us viewers, that much fun.
Gap Year hops around Southeast Asia, yet in the process, it feels like an ongoing story, not a series of separate adventures.
And the more it unfolds, the more it feels like millennials get slammed with the same stuff as the rest of us – no matter how far or fast those young legs can run.