Boarders is a 2023 British teen comedy-drama created by Daniel Lawrence Taylor (who appears in the series as Gus) about five young Londoners — Jaheim, Leah, Omar, Femi, and Toby — who win scholarships to attend the elite boarding school St Gilbert's to clean up the school's image after a scandal.
The series premiered on 20 February 2024 on BBC Three. It was also made available in the United States on 8 March 2024 as Tubi's first scripted original series.
Boarders provides examples of the following tropes:
- Armoured Closet Gay: Subverted. It initially seems the show will go down the Loving Bully route with Omar and Rupert, as Rupert is a closeted gay bully. But Omar bringing a more sympathetic side out of Rupert doesn't automatically make Rupert a Reformed Bully.
- Cunning Linguist: Toby learned enough Farsi to avoid getting ripped of when bargaining with local Iranian shop owners who attempt to Hide Behind the Language Barrier and fluent Japanese to better understand Yasujiro Ozu films.
- Education Mama: Femi's strict Nigerian Immigrant Parents put a great deal of pressure on him and his brother to succeed.
- Everyone Has Standards: Gus points out to Bernard that you know it's bad when even the Daily Mail (a Murdoch-owned right-wing publication in the UK) called the school's scandal "The Great British Shame".
- Honour Before Reason: Bernard, the school's headmaster, has to balance modernising the school for PR and keeping its conservative parents and donors happy so he doesn't lose his job, which means adhering to rules and traditions at the cost of properly accommodating new students from under-privileged backgrounds, even if he is rooting for them to succeed on a personal level. There are hints he is unsatisfied with these rules and traditions and deep down, knows change is needed, but ultimately sticks to them.
- Rich Bastard: The plot is kickstarted by an online video of spoiled St Gilbert's students harassing a homeless person. Somewhat subverted in the sense that these posh boys, Rupert in particular, initially come across as intimidating in their bad behaviour coupled with immense privilege... but they turn out to be mostly weird, stuffy, and miserable with issues, which is played as a satire of the British upper/upper-middle class and the kind of environment that produces the David Camerons and Boris Johnsons of the world.
- Soapbox Sadie: In her first appearance, Leah is introduced confronting a coffee shop employee about hipster coffee shops gentrifying the local area, setting the tone for her character's style of political engagement.
