SHOW OF THE WEEK: Ginny & Georgia (Feb. 24, Netflix)

Diesel La Torraca as Austin, Brianne Howey as Georgia and Antonia Gentry as Ginny
in “Ginny & Georgia.” PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of Netflix

A lot of the fun of “Ginny & Georgia” is the way it both fulfills and subverts our expectations of this kind of youth-oriented fare. It’s part high school dramedy, part rom-com, part coming-of-age story, part family drama, part redemption tale.

There are tropes like the alluring bad boy, the queer best friend, the stuck-up girls’ clique, but the characters aren’t caricatures and when you think you know where the show is going it often veers a different way.

At the centre of it all are Ginny and her mother Georgia.

Ginny (Antonia Gentry) is a biracial 15-year-old who’s smart, self-aware and somewhat cynical but also full of doubt and angst and insecurity. Her mother Georgia (“Batwoman”), who had Ginny at 15, has wit and intelligence that belie her blond hair and body-hugging, cleavage-baring clothes. She’s also a thief, a con artist and possibly dangerous, and you sense she’d do anything to protect her kids, including son Austin (Diesel La Torraca), who has a different father than Ginny.

After a lifetime spent moving from place to place, usually to run to or escape from a man, Georgia settles in Wellsbury, Massachusetts, in what she hopes will be a permanent home, but Georgia has a messy past that is obviously going to catch up with her.

There also a couple of love triangles in play, one for mother, one for daughter.

The series was shot in Toronto and the supporting cast is loaded with Canadian actors, including Jennifer Robertson (Jocelyn on “Schitt’s Creek”) as Georgia’s friend and neighbour Ellen; Sara Waisglass (“Degrassi”) as Ginny’s lesbian bestie Maxine; Raymond Ablack (“Degrassi,” “Shadowhunters”) as Joe, the eligible owner of the town cafe; Mason Temple as Ginny’s boyfriend Hunter; Sabrina Grdevich (“Traders,” “Intelligence”) as Georgia’s rival Cynthia and Katie Douglas (“Mary Kills People,” “Pretty Hard Cases”) as Abby, part of Max’s and Ginny’s gang of friends.

The series, created by screenwriting newbie Sarah Lampert, is like its heroines: smart, clever, feminist, sometimes frivolous and exuberant, sometimes quiet and thoughtful, and my interest didn’t flag once throughout the four episodes I watched.

Beartown (Feb. 22, 9 p.m., HBO, Crave)

Ulf Stenberg as Peter Andersson in “Beartown.” PHOTO CREDIT: Niklas Maupoix/HBO

“Beartown” begins with a drone view of two figures running through snowy woods, one with a gun. The pursuit ends with the sound of a shot. 

By the end of the first episode, you’ll know who the hunter and hunted are, but you’ll need to watch the other four for the why and to learn whether that shot hit home. The explanation is a potent mix of toxic masculinity, family dysfunction, rape mythology and hero worship.

On its surface, “Beartown” — based on the acclaimed novel by Fredrik Backman — is a hockey drama.

Former NHL player Peter Andersson (Ulf Stenberg) moves his family from Canada back to his Swedish hometown to coach. 

Beartown is a bit of a backwater. The town’s pride and a good deal of its financial stability are tied to the fortunes of its junior hockey team.

With Peter as coach the team starts winning games, making him a hometown hero. He also becomes a father figure to star player Kevin Erdahl (Oliver Dufaker), whose emotionally repressed father Mats seems to care only about hockey and money.

But when Peter’s teenage daughter Maya (Miriam Ingrid) is raped, the ugly chauvinism behind the town’s hockey worship is exposed. Players, parents and fans close ranks against the victim — “she was asking for it,” “she’s a whore” — and anyone who supports her.

Given the entirely believable onslaught of hate, it makes you marvel that any young woman would be brave enough to report a sexual assault.

There is a resolution of sorts to the case but no real justice and no real redemption for the town.

The victim and perpetrator and their families move on, but it seems the warped masculinity that underpins the hockey will continue.

Short Takes

Alex Garfin and Jordan Elsass as Jordan and Jonathan Kent with Elizabeth Tulloch as Lois Lane
in “Superman & Lois.” PHOTO CREDIT: The CW/Bell Media

Superman & Lois (Feb. 23, 9 p.m., CTV Sci-Fi Channel)

You think being a superhero is tough work? Try saving the world and being a good father at the same time. That’s the crux of this series created by genre veteran Greg Berlanti (“The Flash,” “Arrow,” “Supergirl” and much more) and Todd Helping. Superman/Clark Kent (Tyler Hoechlin) and Lois Lane (Elizabeth Tulloch) are married with two teenage boys, one of whom appears to have inherited Dad’s superpowers which, as you can imagine, is a lot to deal with on top of the usual adolescent angst. Complicating Clark’s desire to be more present for his sons is a new extraterrestrial foe out to destroy Superman. And did I mention the family is moving from Metropolis to Smallville?

Arctic Vets (Feb. 26, 8:30 p.m.); Kingdom of the Polar Bears (Feb. 26, 9 p.m., both CBC and CBC Gem)

Dr. Chris Enright with a female polar bear who was anesthetized and taken by helicopter into the wilderness to keep her from getting shot. PHOTO CREDIT: Courtesy of CBC

Feb. 27 is International Polar Bear Day, so it’s fitting that “The Nature of Things” has made the majestic animals the subject of its episode the night before, the same evening that CBC premieres the docuseries “Arctic Vets.” The first episode of “Vets” just follows Dr. Chris Enright of the Assiniboine Park Conservancy in Winnipeg as he travels north to Churchill to help the Polar Bear Alert Team with an animal who’s wandered too close to town. She has to be trapped, anesthetized, examined, tagged and then taken by helicopter 70 kilometres away where she’ll hopefully live out the rest of her life far from humans. For an idea of what that bear’s future might look like, “The Nature of Things” has the two-part “Kingdom of the Polar Bears,” in which tracker Dennis Compayre aims to spend a year following a mother bear and her cubs, beginning as soon as they emerge from their birthing den. The doc is full of awe-inspiring moments that will make your heart ache when you consider that climate change has put these animals in grave danger.