15 Best Teen TV Series To Watch In 2023

If you love a little bit of teen drama every now and then, join the club.

written by Joy Onu
18 min read
05 Sep, 2023

Sex Education | Teen Vogue

The world of teen drama is always so exciting, no matter how you slice it. It’s somewhat become a guilty pleasure to everyone and anyone.

The best Teen TV series are the ones that give you an overload of drama, from crazy love triangles, to self-obsessed main characters, and eclectic love stories. These 15 best teen TV series literally have it all.

Euphoria

HBO’s Euphoria gives Highschool teen drama a whole new meaning, it’s the kind of Teen TV series that bleeds an abundance of drama. The teens at Euphoria High with Rue (Zendaya) at the forefront, get into a highly provocative level of drama at every turn.

Rue suffers from a combination of depression and addiction, and all her friends are either selling drugs, getting into torrid love affairs, or creating catastrophic plays that depict all of the above. It has a very dark way of bringing teen fictional characters to life, and while it’s not the first teen drama to do so, Euphoria sure does have a lot of elements blended into one that makes it stand out from a lot of other teen dramas.

The Summer I Turned Pretty

The Summer I Turned Pretty is the definition of teen love triangles, you’re either Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah, and these days, you could even be Team Anti-Belly. Just because of how Belly (Lola Tung) is insufferable as a character sometimes, she has her good moments and her not so great moments as she’s torn between two brothers.

Every Summer at Cousins beach for as long as she can remember, she’s secretly loved Conrad, but “the summer she turns pretty” everything changes, Conrad the brooding teen finally notices her in that way, and then there’s Jeremiah, the blue-eyed, lovable teen, who’s always loved her. The love triangle of the century begins that summer, and you’ll be on a rollercoaster of emotions all through.

Tell Me Lies

Full disclosure, Tell Me Lies isn’t actually a Teen TV drama, technically it follows the casually crazy and scandalous lives of college students. The lies and toxicity in one relationship is crazy and unreal. It follows the love story between Lucy and Stephen, their love story isn’t the kind you dream of, in fact it’s the opposite. It is toxic, addictive and just unpredictable, the worst part is, it doesn’t just affect them, it affects everyone around them. Tell Me Lies is definitely worth watching for the plot, the plot being the unhealthy sexual tension between Lucy and Stephen.

Sex Education

Everyone and their mum has probably seen Sex Education, but on the off chance that you haven’t, now is the time. Netflix’s Sex Education gives coming-of-age dramas a whole new meaning. It is spicy, cute, sexy, and sometimes raunchy, but it’s super good.

Every single character brings something to the sex education table, there’s Otis, a lovable endearing character, then there’s out-of-this Maeve, and let’s not forget the beam of energy that is Eric. There’s so much to love about Sex Education, and the icing on the cake is in all of its characters.

Blood & Water

Blood & Water will have you on a goose chase and a chokehold, this South African teen TV series isn’t your ordinary teen drama, it’s criminal, crazy and sure, there’s cute love triangles as well. It follows the story of Puleng, as she goes on a wild journey filled with a lot of scheming and detective work in order to find her sister that was abducted at birth. After she meets Fikile at a party, she’s enamored by her, and she just can’t shake off her gut feeling that Fikile might be her long lost sister, so she does what any not-so-normal teenager would do, she enrolls in the same private school as Fikile.

Yellowjackets

Yellowjackets is a teen TV drama of the thriller genre, it will have you on pins and needles as you watch a bunch of teen girls and a couple guys try to survive being stuck in the middle of nowhere with no food.

Yellowjackets is set in 1996, it follows a New Jersey high school soccer team called Yellowjackets as they head to another state for nationals, their plane crashes in “the wilderness.” The story goes back and forth between the past and present, so basically it shows the characters as teenagers and then as grown women. Twist after twist, secret after secret, and some really creepy events in between, we watch how these groups of people survive through the most horrendous thing that could happen to any human being.

Far From Home

Netflix’s Far From Home is a Nigerian Teen TV drama that follows the students at Wilmer Academy. Ishaya, a troubled but talented teenager, finds himself in the world of the rich when he gets a scholarship into an exclusive school. He navigates his new reality, but runs into a bit of trouble along the way. This Nigerian teen TV series is the first of its kind on Netflix, so it has a lot of good parts, from the love triangles, to the secrets, the kingpin drama, and everything in between.

Elite

Elite takes on a storyline that is quite mysterious, after three teens start their journey at a prestigious private school in Spain. What starts out as a series about the new working-class students and how they navigate a world that is filled with a lot of rich teens they have nothing in common with, quickly turns into a murder

All American

The world of Spencer James is one to watch, it follows Spencer, a football player in high school as he goes from one school to another. The story is quite family oriented, and if you’re into American football, then you’ll love this. All American has everything, from love triangles, beefs, rapping, football team drama, and even a spin-off show. All American is an all round teen TV series, it doesn’t shy away from important discussions like racial discrimination and other topics, and it definitely doesn’t hurt that the cast of this show are all stunning.

School Spirits

School Spirits takes the spirits in high school quite literally. This is a mysterious teen TV series, Maddie is a high school girl stuck in an afterlife alongside the spirits of other teenagers that died at different points, but their spirits are all stuck in their high school. Maddie is on her journey to figure out the events that led to her death.

Cruel Summer

Cruel Summer is downright cruel, each season has a new set of characters and a different storyline. All seasons are crazy and interesting, each storyline focuses on different timelines that tell a story of the events leading up to even more traumatic events. The best part of Cruel Summer is the twists and turns, you never know who the bad guy is, it’s almost as though you’re in a tug of war trying to decide which character to support, you never really know the true culprit, even till the very end.

The Society

The Society on Netflix was very short lived and we never got to see the end of it. Imagine going on a school trip, away from your family and the small town you’ve lived in all your life, but then in a mysterious chain of events, your school bus brings you back to find out that everyone is gone and the whole town is deserted. Together they have to find ways to survive and create a society that’s like any normal society, all the while trying to figure out what happened to their town and all the people in it.

Rebelde

Rebelde is based on a 2004 telenovela series of the same name, and you know how good telenovelas are, so that’s a major sell. The show revolves around six first year students in a private school, they have different ways of life but they decide to come together to create a band that’s so good.

Gossip Girl

There’s no way we can go through this list without mentioning Gossip Girl, it is the Queen B of all teen TV series. It has everything from gossip, to backstabbing, love stories and a world of an elite group of friends navigating their crazy lifestyles on the Upper East Side of New York. Blair Waldorf and Serena Van Der Woodsen are IT girls, and wherever they are, drama follows.

Pretty Little Liars

Pretty Little Liars is as mysterious as it’s going to get, it also deserves honorable mention for being a series ahead of its time. It follows the lives of four teenage girls as they try to figure out who the anonymous ‘A’ that keeps threatening them is. There’s dark secrets following the disappearance of a friend in their group, and they are caught right in the middle of it.