‘Off Campus' review: Prime Video adaptation scores in all the right ways
TV review
I didn't think I needed a soapy, college drama in my life, but then I watched "Off Campus," the new Prime Video series based on Elle Kennedy's 2015 book "The Deal" and the subsequent four novels in the "Off-Campus" series.
The series introduces viewers to Briar University and our main characters: Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli) is a superstar hockey player with a former NHL player dad; his opposites-attract co-star is bubbly music major Hannah Wells (Ella Bright). The duo are brought together in a classic romance book trope - a deal. He needs to pass philosophy to maintain his eligibility. She doesn't know how to talk to her crush without feeling like a complete fool. The plan is to serve as tutors for each other: him to get the grade, her to get the guy. But of course things don't go as planned.
What transpires across showrunner Louisa Levy's eight episodes is (mostly) a marvel that bolstered my faith in the power of frank communication, the importance of friendship and how representation on screen can mean so many different things.
The first episode introduces our two leads by highlighting their differences. Hannah is be-bopping around a darkened hockey arena, music blaring through her headphones as she wipes down concession stand countertops and tosses dirty towels into a laundry cart in the locker room. Garrett is showering off after a grueling hockey practice. And, in a voyeuristic shower scene that calls to mind the other smash-hit hockey show, Hannah is caught ogling Garrett and promptly trips over the laundry cart. Look, Levy is saying, our plucky heroine is adorable, isn't she?
And she is, but she's also whip-smart. Their next meeting is during a shared class - one in which Hannah aces a difficult paper that Garrett fails. After calling her out on her A+ only to be scolded for snooping by Hannah, the smirking hockey star quips back, "Only you get to look at things you shouldn't?"
From there it's off to the races, punchy dialogue peppering nearly every scene. We meet Hannah's best friend and roommate, Allie Hayes (Mika Abdalla), a bubbly, siren-esque theater major, alongside Garrett's best friends and teammates: the tortured soul John Logan (Antonio Cipriano), the playboy Dean Di Laurentis (Stephen Kalyn), and fans of "The Pitt" will recognize Jalen Thomas Brooks as the resident hockey house chef John Tucker.
There's an even larger supporting cast of fully actualized characters: John Logan's hockey-commentating nonbinary sibling Jules (Julia Sarah Stone); musician and object of Hannah's affection Justin (Josh Heuston); Garrett's abusive father and retired hockey superstar Phil Graham (Steve Howey); and Dean's best party buddy Beau Maxwell (Khobe Clarke).
It doesn't make the cast feel bloated, however. Instead, it provides plausible opportunities for these characters to play off each other and further sells the idea that these truly are opposites attracting. Of course they would have different friend groups in a large college setting, and the large cast helps fill out all the necessary scenes when a lot of bodies should be there - the parties, the hockey games, the music showcases, the classrooms.
It also gives these characters a chance to, well, talk. With each other, about real things. Nearly every character has an emotional hardship (it wouldn't be a soap otherwise!). Some are hiding abuse or a secret from their past. Some are carrying deep-seated shame or desperately trying to come to grips with uncomfortable truths about themselves. Connecting with each other in the messy, emotional setting of your early 20s with your college friends is something deeply relatable and the show hits almost every mark.
Levy has her male characters do a lot more of this heavy conversation lifting - especially around the idea of safety and consent - in a way that healed a little part of my old college self and brought to mind all the ways representation on screen matters. It's superficial to discount these hockey players as dumb jocks, only out for a good time.
Female characters aren't one-note, either. Allie struggles with balancing ideas of true love and partnership with career ambition. Hannah must put a deep trauma behind her to step into the musician she wants to be. And everyone has to learn how to have difficult conversations and support each other through the outcomes.
All the while they're playing hockey (although blessedly not much of it), writing music and very much living their best college lives. As an elder millennial, there were multiple times while watching that it felt very similar to laughing at adult jokes placed in Pixar movies. There are so many '80s and '90s pop-culture references, both overt (multiple viewings of "Dirty Dancing" and plenty of hairband music) and covert (Guess Jeans, Keds and a near-perfect re-creation of a "Sixteen Candles" shot), I wonder if some of them will fly over Gen Z heads.
Amazon has already greenlit a second season, and the show does a wonderful job of planting seeds among the other characters for future story lines. The explosive season finale will have you salivating for Season 2 and a deeper look at the lives and twisty romantic entanglements of these students. I can't wait to watch it.
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This story was originally published May 11, 2026 at 5:01 PM.