5 Must-Watch TV Shows Like Sterling Point for Your Next Binge

If “My Old Ass” or “The Fallout” made your favorites list, you already know the emotional precision Megan Park can bring to a story. Now, with her new series “Sterling Point,” she may have another must-watch title ready for your streaming queue.

Ella Rubin leads the Amazon Prime Video original series “Sterling Point,” created by Park and run by Park alongside Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage — names that will mean plenty to teen drama fans. Rubin plays Annie Jacobson, a New York City teenager whose life is upended after her grandfather dies and unexpectedly leaves her an enormous property on a Canadian island. Annie heads north with her twin brother Connor, played by Keen Ruffalo, the son of Mark Ruffalo, and soon finds herself pulled into a new world filled with intriguing figures, including Ramona, played by Amélie Hoeferle, who is already spending time at the late grandfather’s home.

Although “Sterling Point” fits comfortably within the young adult TV landscape, it aims for something more textured than the genre’s usual glossy escapism. Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Park explained, “I wanted to make a YA show that felt as authentic as possible.” Schwartz, whose partnership with Savage has long centered on stories where young characters are taken seriously, echoed that approach. “When you’re a teenager and you’re coming of age, everything feels so life and death and dramatic and emotional. You’re figuring yourself out in a way that really happens at that moment in your life,” he told the publication. “It’s a rich source of drama, and Megan just mined it beautifully and with a really original, unique voice.”

Once you’ve streamed all eight episodes of “Sterling Point,” which premiered on August 5, you may be wondering what to watch next. Whether you’re drawn to the Schwartz-Savage style of teen storytelling or simply want another emotionally charged YA drama, these series should be on your radar if “Sterling Point” left you wanting more.

For another Amazon Prime Video series built around young love, complicated friendships, and major summer feelings, “The Summer I Turned Pretty” is an obvious next stop — even if it leans far more sun-soaked and melodramatic than grounded and gritty. Adapted from Jenny Han’s bestselling book trilogy, with Han also serving as showrunner, the three-season drama follows Isabel “Belly” Conklin, played with luminous charm by Lola Tung. Every summer, Belly travels to the fictional Cousins Beach with her mother, Laurel Park (Jackie Chung), to stay at the beach house owned by Laurel’s best friend, Susannah Fisher (Rachel Blanchard). But one summer changes everything when Susannah’s sons, Conrad and Jeremiah — played by Christopher Briney and Gavin Casalegno — begin seeing Belly not as the little girl they grew up with, but as someone they both might love.

With her best friend Taylor (Rain Spencer) and older brother Steven (Sean Kaufman) in the mix, Belly spends the series caught between the Fisher brothers while trying to understand who she is, what she wants, and how to handle the heartbreak surrounding the Fisher family. “The Summer I Turned Pretty” is unabashedly soapy, occasionally over-the-top, and often delightfully dramatic — and yes, it also makes a compelling case for how far someone might go to stay close to a truly stunning beach house. Still, beneath the love triangle and summer-party chaos, the show delivers a sincere coming-of-age story with enough warmth and feeling to keep viewers fully invested until Belly finally makes her choice.

If you want a coming-of-age story with characters a few years older than the teens of “Sterling Point” or “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” “The Bold Type” offers a polished, addictive New York City spin. Created by Sarah Watson, the series follows three ambitious young women working at Scarlet, a fictional women’s magazine. There’s Sutton Brady, an aspiring stylist played by Meghann Fahy, who later broke out in “The White Lotus” and “Sinners”; Jane Sloan, a writer played by Katie Stevens; and Kat Edison, a social media strategist and activist played by Aisha Dee. Executive producer Joanna Coles, formerly the editor of Cosmopolitan, helped inspire parts of the show’s magazine-world backdrop.

Across the series, Sutton, Jane, and Kat face messy romances, evolving identities, career pressures, health scares, family struggles, and the many complications of early adulthood — but their friendship remains the heart of the show. They also have the support, and occasional tough love, of Scarlet’s commanding editor-in-chief Jacqueline Carlyle, played by “The Office” alum Melora Hardin. Is “The Bold Type” a heightened fantasy version of media life? Absolutely. Does it take some wildly unrealistic swings at how digital publishing actually works, including a scene where an article seems to go live straight from a Google doc? Without question. But thanks to its charismatic cast, glossy energy, and heartfelt storytelling, it remains a deeply watchable comfort drama.

Remember how we said we’d circle back to Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage? Well, before co-showrunning “Sterling Point” with Megan Park, they co-created “Gossip Girl,” a series that aired on The CW and is (very) loosely based on a series of young adult novels by New York City private school alum Cecily von Ziegesar.

The show kicks off when teenaged socialite Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) returns to Manhattan’s wealthy Upper East Side after skipping town and attending boarding school under unexplained circumstances, but unfortunately for Serena, her sudden reappearance sends the aforementioned Upper East Side into a full-on frenzy. First and foremost, Serena’s lifelong best friend Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester) is sort of horrified to see her high school’s queen bee return. Meanwhile, Blair’s boyfriend Nate Archibald (Chace Crawford) is concerned Serena will spill secrets about their past, bad boy Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick) is simply titillated, and Brooklyn-based brother and sister Dan and Jenny Humphrey (Penn Badgley and Taylor Momsen) are fascinated by the mythic figure who’s returned to their midst. 

“Gossip Girl” is, unlike “Sterling Point,” not grounded in any sort of reality. This is a show where people come back from the dead, secret societies are introduced and discarded, Billy Baldwin shows up doing what can only be described as an impression of his brother Alec on “30 Rock,” and a character marries a prince. That doesn’t matter, though, because “Gossip Girl” is so much fun. Skip the HBO Max revival series, though; that one lacks the absurdity of the original and suffers for it. (Notably, the revival did not have Schwartz and Savage on board, so that could be a major factor.)

Based on the novel of the same name by E. Lockhart, “We Were Liars,” another Amazon Prime Video original which released in 2025, centers around the wealthy Sinclair family, all of whom are keeping a ton of secrets. When we first meet Cadence “Cady” Sinclair Eastman (Emily Alyn Lind, who, coincidentally, appeared on the aforementioned “Gossip Girl” reboot), she’s 16 years old and preparing to spend yet another summer on Beechwood Island with her family, including her cousins Mirren and Johnny (Esther McGregor and Joseph Zada), as well as Gat Patil (Shubham Maheshwari), the nephew of Ed Patil (Rahul Kohli), the partner to Cady’s aunt Carrie (Mamie Gummer). Shortly after the show begins, Cady wakes up with no memory of the previous two months and learns that she was in an accident, but isn’t given any specifics … and is left in the dark about what happened to her.

“We Were Liars” is, again, quite a bit campier than “Sterling Point,” and the reveals are much more sensational and exaggerated. Still, it’ll definitely scratch the “Sterling Point” itch, especially when it introduces mystery after mystery about the wealthy Sinclair family. With one season on Amazon as of this writing, “We Were Liars” still has plenty of story to tell. Don’t you want to find out what happened to Cady?

One of the defining teen dramas of its era which was, incidentally, created by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, “The O.C.,” which aired for four seasons on Fox, is genuinely a highlight of the genre and an influence on all the shows that followed in its footsteps. When the series begins, Ryan Atwood (future “Gotham” star and anti-cryptocurrency activist Benjamin McKenzie) is caught trying to steal a car with his wayward brother in the impoverished California town of Chino; when his public defender Sandy Cohen (Peter Gallagher) takes pity on Ryan, he ends up whisked away to the gorgeous Cohen mansion in Orange County, much to the chagrin of Sandy’s high society wife and real estate developer Kirsten (Kelly Rowan). Eventually, though, Sandy and Kirsten officially welcome Ryan into the family, giving their awkward, nerdy, and completely friendless son Seth (Adam Brody) a lifeline.

“The O.C.” is smart, snappy, and a genuinely phenomenal TV show — especially thanks to its lead performers, including the ones we already mentioned and Mischa Barton as girl next door Marissa Cooper, Rachel Bilson as Seth’s dream girl Summer Roberts, and Melinda Clarke as Marissa’s conniving mother Julie Cooper. If we had it our way, “The O.C.” would be required viewing before you sit down and enjoy “Sterling Point” — but suffice to say, you should watch both of these teen dramas immediately.

“Sterling Point” Season 1 is streaming on Amazon Prime Video now.