You don’t have to be a genius to know that, after the success of Stranger Things, we were set for a wave of shows about awkward, geeky teenagers.

Some are going to miss the mark, and do so by a long way, and you’ll have to make your own mind up about Everything Sucks!.

It’s 1996, and you’ve just arrived at high school. Or middle school – it’s set in America, and who really knows how their school system plays out.

The peeps at Vulture are already in deep:

The kids in Everything Sucks! brood to music by Tori Amos and Oasis. They play with slap bracelets and use VCRs plugged into non-flat-screen televisions. They dress like No Doubt–era Gwen Stefani and paste magazine pictures of Scott Wolf from Party of Five into collages…

But as tempting as it is to dismiss Everything Sucks! as nothing more than a thinly veiled excuse to revisit a time when Beavis and Butt-Head jokes were of the moment, this series slowly proves itself to be something more than that…

Even with its flaws, Everything Sucks! is worth the journey, proving with each episode that it, and life, really does get better.

Yup, it does:

I suppose it’s kind of similar to the Spud movies, except not a giant piece of shite.

Not sure that any of these kids will ascend to the fame level enjoyed by Millie Bobby Brown (she’s 14 and has 15 million Instagram followers), but you have to start somewhere.

Also, if Showmax wants to continue with the quality local content and produce something about going to school in the 90s in South Africa, we are ready.

[source:vulture]