Geek Girl Review 2024 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
“I guess to us, it isn’t a makeover, it’s a full metamorphosis,” says Harriet Manners (Emily Carey) as we see flashes of her life as a top runway model, interspersed with her previous life in high school. Her hair isn’t done, she’s wearing no makeup, and she falls down a lot. She’s not sure why her classmates have called her “Geek Girl” over the years, but her social awkwardness and ability to dive deep into subjects she’s interested in is pretty much the dictionary definition of the word “geek.”
She tries to blend in, unlike her next door neighbor Toby Pilgrim (Zac Looker), but that still doesn’t stop her archnemesis Lexi (Mia Jenkins) from calling her “Spanners” and making fun of her pretty much nonstop. Thankfully, she has her more social bestie Nat Gray (Rochelle Harrington) to help her make school tolerable.
The textiles class Harriet and Nat are in won a competition to attend a show at London’s Fashion Week; it’s important to Nat that they’re on time for the bus, because she hopes to make an impression with some of the model scouts in attendance. Harriet barely makes the bus and falls on her back in the aisle, much to the delight of Lexi and her friend group. Then her backpack gets passed around, and someone writes “GEEK” on it. To further the indignity, Harriet and Nat have to wear neon green gym clothes after Toby accidentally spills his smoothie on them.
Undeterred, Nat introduces herself to Wilbur Evans (Emmanuel Imani), a well-known agency rep who is scouting for models. He says she’s stunning, “but this is fashion. Stunning and beautiful are not enough.” He’s looking for someone with a particular “It” factor, and that person happens to be Harriet, who is busying herself in the lobby trying on a bejeweled hat frame and knocking everything down.
When she causes a scene after she knocks the displays down, Lexi and company gleefully video it, intending on posting it on their socials. But what they don’t realize is that Wilbur and his assistant Betty (Hebe Beardsall) have brought her into a green room and told her they want her to model for their agency. Harriet, finding out that Nat met Wilbur and got turned down, leaves to support her friend, but not before having a meet-cute with top male model Nick Park (Liam Woodrum), who is definitely attracted to her, even if she doesn’t know it yet.
The whole idea behind Geek Girl is that, despite this fashion world whirlwind that has snapped up Harriet, underneath the couture wardrobe and expert makeup and hair is still the same awkward “geek girl” that was unmercifully made fun of by the likes of Lexi and her buddies “the Olives.”
There are hints that Harriet is neurodivergent, but a label isn’t really attached to it by Smale, who created the series with Jessica Rusto. She didn’t write the novels that way, not even realizing she had written a neurodivergent character until she was diagnosed as autistic three years ago. Carey herself has told fans of the novels that she is on the spectrum, as well. So it’s a pretty reasonable thought to conclude that Harriet is neurodivergent, but the fact that Harriet herself just says she’s awkward and doesn’t fit in is almost refreshing, because Smale and the writers don’t feel the need to point it out.
The second episode brings the hows and whys of Harriet’s entry into the fashion world into focus. Wilbur and Betty go to Harriet’s school to find her when a designer their agency works for, Yuji Lee (Sandra Yi Sencindiver) decides she wants a fresh face to model the centerpiece of her next line. At the same time, a particularly humiliating run-in with Lexi prompts her to go for it, with Nat’s help, because, as she says in her voice over, she was tired of feeling like “I’m never enough.”
It’s that motivation that drives Harriet, and seeing her transformation will be fun to watch. Whether that makes her feel like enough, or if the glitz of the fashion world makes her lose herself is going to be the crux of this show’s first season. But what we do know is that Carey has the ability to play Harriet as both the unassuming, awkward version of Harriet as well as the glamorous, more confident version… who just happens to still be awkward.
