Netflix is heading back to school — and out onto the water — with its latest teen drama.
The streamer has released the first trailer for Crew Girl, a new coming-of-age sports romance set inside the highly competitive world of elite prep-school rowing. The eight-episode series combines all the ingredients of a classic teen drama — rivalries, family secrets, friendships, romance and plenty of attractive young people making questionable decisions — with the high-pressure world of competitive rowing.
At the centre of the story is 16-year-old Teagan Tao (Miku Martineau), a talented single-sculls rower whose privileged life is suddenly upended when her luxury hotelier father is accused of financial fraud. With her family name engulfed in scandal, Teagan and her mother, Ella (Jessica Paré), leave California behind and relocate to Ella’s small Massachusetts hometown of Eagle’s Cove.
There, Teagan enrols at the prestigious Easton Prep, an old-school private institution that only began admitting female students two years earlier. There’s just one major problem for the ambitious young athlete: the school doesn’t have a girls’ rowing team.
Instead, Teagan catches the attention of Coach Matt Hayden (Thomas Cadrot), who recruits her to become the coxswain of the school’s dysfunctional all-boys varsity crew. Suddenly, she’s responsible for steering a team filled with oversized egos, long-running grudges and athletes who aren’t exactly thrilled about taking orders from the new girl.
Naturally, things get even more complicated once romance enters the boat.
Teagan soon finds herself caught between two very different teammates: Josh Regis (Sam Braun), Easton Prep’s arrogant, old-money team captain, and Cam Dillinger (Kyle Clark), a fiercely driven local kid who doesn’t quite fit into the school’s privileged world. Josh comes from a family with deep ties to Easton Prep, while Cam is an outsider fighting to prove he deserves his place on the crew.
The love triangle is only part of the drama. The school year brings warring rivals, shifting friendships, family tensions and betrayals that threaten to spill over both on and off the water. Teagan is also trying to make sense of the scandal surrounding her father while navigating an increasingly complicated relationship with her mother.
In other words, Crew Girl has the makings of the kind of unapologetically soapy teen series that once dominated primetime television. Creator and showrunner Vivian Lin has even acknowledged the throwback appeal, recalling that after an early table read, Cadrot summed up the series as Gossip Girl meets Friday Night Lights — only on a boat.
There’s also a major Canadian connection behind the series
Although Crew Girl is set in Massachusetts, the show was filmed in British Columbia and features a largely Canadian cast and creative team. Production took place in B.C. in 2025, with Victoria among the filming locations used to stand in for the fictional East Coast setting.
Toronto-born Martineau, who previously appeared in Netflix’s Bet and the action film Kate, leads the ensemble as Teagan. Montreal-born Mad Men alum Jessica Paré plays her mother, Ella, while the cast also includes Canadian actors Braun, Clark and Cadrot. Riley Davis, Olga Petsa, Connor Wong, Vincent Muller and others round out the ensemble.
Lin developed the series after executive producer Jeff Norton approached her and fellow Canadian writer Morwyn Brebner about creating a show centred on rowing. Lin and Brebner developed the premise and co-wrote the pilot, and Netflix subsequently ordered an eight-episode first season.
With its picturesque waterfront setting, old-money prep-school world, competitive sports and built-in love triangle, Crew Girl looks poised to scratch a very specific teen-drama itch. And judging by the trailer, there will be almost as much maneuvering happening off the water as there is in the boat.
All eight episodes of Crew Girl start streaming on Netflix on Thursday, September 10, 2026.
