A small Texas town when a beautiful popular teen, Kate, is abducted and, seemingly unrelated, a girl, Jeanette, goes from being a sweet, awkward outlier to the most popular girl in town and, by '95, the most despised person in America.
The device largely works as a set-up to explore, primarily, Jeanette's evolution, which, thanks to Aurelia's impressive performance, somehow manages to feel like an almost completely different character in each of the years visited.
An ambitiously told noir-tinged '90s period piece that weaves its way through three different timelines, 'Cruel Summer' is a 10-steps above your usual Freeform teen drama.
Thanks to an agile cast and a willingness to push for the unexpected response, Cruel Summer ends up a pleasant surprise: A show with a grabby premise but also a great deal on its mind.
Shifting time settings can be a lazy way to shake up contemporary TV narratives, but it's rarely done as sharply as in the new teen series "Cruel Summer".
