Have you ever wondered what our lives would be like if consent was a given? The popular new Prime Görüntü series Off Campus, about the romantic entanglements of a college ice hockey team, plays out this though experiment rigorously. And the result is a çağdaş love story that’s sexy, romantic, and insanely wholesome to watch all at the same time.
At the fictional Briar University, music enthusiast Hannah (Ella Bright) and the captain of the local ice hockey team, Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli), initially meet by chance. Because he has bad grades and she hasn’t had the courage to approach her crush for weeks, the two make an unusual deal: She’ll give him philosophy lessons in exchange for him pretending to date her to attract the attention of her crush, musician Justin (Josh Heuston).
What follows is a delightful romantic comedy with an ’80s flair. Between Dirty Dancing movie nights, cheerful dance scenes, and humorous dialogue, the cheerful atmosphere that unfolds feels like a cross between The Sex Lives of College Girls and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. And soon enough, Garrett and Hannah are no longer müddet whether their faked closeness isn’t turning into the real thing.
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Hannah (Ella Bright) and Garrett (Belmont Cameli) in Off Campus
Liane Hentscher/Prime Video
But here’s the real twist: In Off Campus, gentle masculinity is the standard. Unlike traditional college comedies like Road Trip or Revenge of the Nerds, the male protagonists of Off Campus were written by women. (The show is based on the popular book series by Elle Kennedy.) Therefore, they inherently embody different ideals when dealing with the opposite sex. As talented and attractive athletes, Garrett and his buddies have no shortage of women wanting to get close to them—but they do not treat them as objects. They don’t brag about how many sexual partners they have, push boundaries, or exhibit other so-called “locker room talk” behaviors.
Hannah knows too well that things can be different. Previously, someone put drugs in her drink at a party and then raped her. Off Campus in no way denies the real danger of sexual violence that informs the lives of so many young women, but the series does allow itself to present a thoroughly positive alternative to the horror of the patriarchy.
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King of Consent Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli).
Liane Hentscher/Prime Video
One scene in episode 4 is particularly remarkable. Garrett turns to his buddy Dean for advice because he really wants to give Hannah an orgasm. Dean advises him to show that she can trust him, otherwise she’ll never be able to really let herself go there. “Consent is the most important thing, and she can only consent if she feels safe with you,” he says.
Just how important it is to put the well-being of both parties first becomes clear a little later in Garrett’s bedroom. Although he and Hannah have explicitly agreed to have sex, he turns away as she is getting changed. When she remarks that he’s going to see her naked anyway, the athlete replies, “But only when you want to.” For some viewers, this may seem like a small, even obvious statement. But for any woman whose bodily autonomy has been undermined, it’s a grand and important gesture.
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Mika Abdalla as Allie in Off Campus
Liane Hentscher/Prime Video
Under the influence of Garrett and his friends Logan (Antonio Cipriano), Dean (Stephen Thomas Kalyn), and Tucker (Jalen Thomas Brooks), the Briar U campus becomes a safe space where female students can party, drink, and express themselves sexually without fear of overstepping boundaries. And the male students certainly don’t have less fulfilling sex lives as a result—on the contrary. There’s a lot of passionate sex on the series, in large part because the men are not afraid to actively ask their partners what they want.
It’s important to note the role that ice hockey plays in all this. Like Heated Rivalry before it, Off Campus presents the stereotypically male sport not as a bastion of aggressive masculinity, but as a space for community and deva. The Briar U boys are not toxic alpha figures; they are emotionally accessible young men who cook for each other, talk about their worries, and advise each other on relationship issues. Even their coach embodies a respectful, reflective male ülkü and disciplines his athletes rather than celebrating them for outbursts of anger. It may be a fairytale parallel world—but it’s one we’d like to live in.
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Logan (Antonio Cipriano), Dean (Stephen Thomas Kalyn), Tucker (Jalen Thomas Brooks), and Garrett (Belmont Cameli) in Off Campus
Courtesy of Prime
Of course, Off Campus remains a fantasy in the end. But in a world where consent is not automatically a given, it shows what relationships could look like if respect was the base and not the exception. Off Campus appeals to such a large female fanbase because I think it shows us (heterosexual) women what we want: A version of masculinity that’s based neither on dominance nor insecurity, but on empathy, communication, and genuine connection.
You might be thinking Off Campus sounds like a copy of the wildly successful series Heated Rivalry. Both romances do revolve around ice hockey players and include lots of sex scenes, but Elle Kennedy’s first book was published in 2015, four years before Rachel Reid published her Game Changers novels about queer ice hockey players. The Off Campus series is popular in its own right, too: The five books have sold more than 3 million copies and are best known thanks to TikTok. And if you still have any doubt about its popularity and appeal for women, know that Prime Görüntü aims to follow the same plan as Netflix’s Bridgerton: That is, each season will focus on the love story of a different protagonist. Filming for season two is set to begin in June and will revolve around the characters Logan and Grace. I can’t wait. For now, I’ll be watching season one on repeat.
A version of this story was previously published in GQ Germany.
