Off Campus

Amazon

It took some convincing that a show like Off Campus would be for me, but I finally decided to sit down and see what the fuss was about and wow, yeah, that was excellent. Charming, heartwarming, funny, it really hits a lot of quadrants, and reminds me a bit of similar series from back in the day like The OC or Gilmore Girls. Highly recommend. I am not alone, it seems, as Off Campus has just set a Rotten Tomatoes record for the year.

That record? Off Campus has the highest combined critic and audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes of any romance genre show released in the last year. Yes, even higher than the extremely viral and also hockey-based hit, Heated Rivalry. Here’s the list of the main contenders:

• Off Campus (Amazon) – 96% critic score, 90% audience score = 186
• Heated Rivalry (HBO Max) - 96% critic score, 89% audience score = 185
• Forever (Netflix) – 97% critic score, 86% audience score = 183
• Platonic season 2 (Apple TV) – 96% critic score, 81% audience score = 177
• Overcompensating (Amazon) – 94% critic score, 81% audience score = 175
• Outlander: Blood of My Blood (Starz) – 87% critic score, 76% audience score - 163
• The Summer I Turned Pretty season 5 (Amazon) – 92% critic score, 62% audience score = 154
• Nobody Wants This season 2 (Netflix) – 79% critic score, 58% audience score = 137

That’s not all of them, but it’s most of the top and/or highest profile ones, with Off Campus edging out Heated Rivalry by a single point. Both shows have been renewed for season 2 and should be back within the year.

Besides this, as it stands, Off Campus has the third-highest combined critic and audience Rotten Tomatoes score of any series released this past year on Amazon. It is not the highest critic score, but in terms of pleasing both critics and fans, it’s nearly on top. Here’s the breakdown.

• Fallout season 2 – 96% critic score, 96% audience score – 192
• Invincible season 4 – 100% critic score, 87% audience score -187
• Legends – 96% critic score, 85% audience score = 181
• Ballard – 100% critic score, 75% audience score = 175
• Reacher season 3 – 98% critic score, 73% audience score = 171
• The Boys season 5 – 97% critic score, 66% audience score = 163
• Batman: Caped Crusader – 94% critic score, 55% audience score = 149

So, some trends here. Audiences are definitely harsher than critics almost 100% of the time, the biggest exception being those dual 96% scores for Fallout season 2, which remains Amazon’s most-liked series overall. The biggest split is between this final season of The Boys, the series now over as of today. Audiences have drastically disagreed with that ultra-high score.

Off Campus? It’s one of the biggest wins of the last year, both in genre and the streaming service where it resides. Check it out, even if you think it’s not going to be for you.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.