The “Harry Potter” TV Show Needs to Capture High School
My favorite scene in the eight Harry Potter movies that doesn’t find its basis in the books comes midway through Goblet of Fire, at the end of the Yule Ball sequence. Harry and Ron have had a terrible night, but as the ball ends, we get a moment of happiness; we see Neville doing dance steps in the dormitory, reliving what has clearly been one of the greatest nights of his life as a surprisingly excellent wizarding pop ballad plays in the background.
It’s a moment of triumph with which we can all identify: who among us hasn’t gone into some high school dance surly and beaten down before beating the odds to have a spectacular, life-changing time? It’s the kind of experience that transcends the fact that we can’t actually do magic and gives us a foothold in the wizarding world: wizards have dances just like we do, and they often go badly, but sometimes they go really well, and when that happens, you never forget it.
In short, in a lot of ways, wizarding high school is a lot like muggle high school. And that’s a dynamic that the upcoming Harry Potter TV show needs to capture.
The original eight movies themselves, of course, aren’t devoid of coming-of-age, John Hughes-style moments. All three members of the trio have relationships. Emotions and hormones abound. There’s a dance and people go on dates. But the movies have a lot of plot action to pack into roughly two hours, so a lot of the teenaged angst is necessarily sidelined in favor of spells colliding and Voldemort making weird noises.
Now, though, we’ll have a TV show, which will have the same amount of plot to cover – and roughly quadruple the screen time. Which means a lot more space for digressions and side plots, sequences that aren’t essential to the story but are essential to capturing what it’s like to be in high school, even if that high school teaches wizardry.
There are two ways to do this, and the TV show should do both. On the one hand, there are plenty of moments in the books already, moments that the movies elided but the show can bring to the screen. We can see a lot more of the Yule Ball; the trio’s conversations in the common room exploring girls, dates, and navigating the inscrutable world of high school; Percy’s highfalutin’ romance with Penelope Clearwater; Harry’s infamous date with Cho at Madam Puddifoot’s. There’s plenty of source material to work with, and the show shouldn’t be shy about adapting it.
On the other hand, though, the show can do the same thing the movies did so well, but not enough: make Hogwarts its own. Give us Fred’s monologue on what it’s like to find a Yule Ball date; Cedric spilling his inner thoughts about having imposter syndrome among the cool kids; a more in-depth portrayal of Harry slowly but surely falling for Ginny; Cho getting a Clueless-style makeover and dropping every jaw on the Quidditch pitch.
And while we’re making additions that can complement the main plot, the show can take things in yet another direction: academics! There’s simply no way to realistically depict high school without cramming for tests, worries about post-school jobs, and crippling stress at the feeling of slowly getting out of your depth with a course’s subject matter. If you’re making a show about a wizarding high school, there’s one way to make sure it resonates with muggles: film a storyline about one person having to do all the work on a group project. Or better yet: show Professor McGonagall getting an owl from a parent worried about their child’s grades, passive-aggressively suggesting that maybe the latest test was a bit too hard and there should be an optional retake.
What’s going to differentiate the TV show from the movies – hopefully – is completeness. With eight to ten hours per book, there’s time to capture each story in full, not just textually but in essence. And essential to that is capturing the emotional weight the characters assign to events throughout each story, not just the ones at the end.
Fighting Voldemort is a big deal, and obviously, it will be the main point of the show. But this is high school, where a lot of things are a big deal. The dance. Getting a date. Finally beating your rival at Quidditch. Starting to think about what career you might want. First kisses. Big fights. Making friends and keeping them. Being cool. Fitting in. The battle against Voldemort will be front and center from beginning to end. But there’s a lot more to the Harry Potter series than just fighting, and on the TV show, the battle should be one plot line among many others.
