Bring On Australia's Zoey Deutch

Netflix’s My Brilliant Career is the latest in an increasingly long line of love-triangle romances (Off Campus, The Other Bennett Sister, Sterling Point, Elle, etc.) because the indomitable spirit of Felicity continues to haunt streaming television. But I can’t muster the exhaustion this premise usually deserves, because—without spoiling a thing—My Brilliant Career is refreshingly fearless and wholly uncompromising about who its heroine is.

Based on Miles Franklin’s 1901 novel, this Australian period piece operates in the same vein as The Other Bennett Sister, except the source material was decades ahead of its time, and its protagonist Sybylla Melvyn (Philippa Northeast) is exponentially more headstrong and considerably more desperate than Mary. Sybylla’s mother, Lucy, chose love over money when she married, leaving the family not only penniless but drowning in debt. Her grandmother, Mrs. Bossier (Anna Chancellor), agrees to take her in with a single mandate: become a proper lady and marry someone rich enough to save them all.

Sybylla, of course, is an aspiring writer determined not to subsume her life to a husband. It’s the exact quality that makes her irresistible to suitors in stories like this, and she finds herself courted by two: the well-to-do Frank Howden (Jake Dunn) and the generous, strapping Harry Beacham (Christopher Chung). The more she rejects them both, the more enchanted they become—and not in a disturbingly ick way.

What I especially love is how Liz Doran, who created and adapted Franklin’s novel for the screen, resists the cheap narrative trick of the third-act character assassination. Instead, she plants that sabotage in the premiere and spends the rest of the season redeeming the wounded parties in the eyes of Sybylla: a furious, infectious free spirit who bends everyone in her orbit toward independence.

The supporting cast orbit her beautifully, each with their own love stories and secrets, all fighting for escape from society’s suffocating grip. It’s a genuine delight, and Philippa Northeast is the engine driving it all—an invigorating screen presence who never, not once, compromises her values for propriety or a man. She’s clever, the writing is sharp, and while the series doesn’t quite match her star power, it does feel like the kind of breakout moment romantic comedy has needed since Zoey Deutch (and appropriately, Philippa Northeast has been in a long-term relationship with Sam Reid, who brings similar energy to The Vampire Lestat.