Feminism, ambition, hedonism: drama explores lives of university’s privileged – The Guardian

Aisling Franciosi and Synnove Karlsen star as Georgia and Holly in the new BBC3 drama

. Photograph: Mark Mainz/BBC/Balloon/Mark Mainz

It is well-known as the setting for gritty tales of drug addiction and deals gone wrong. But now a new drama will move away from the Edinburgh presented to cinemagoers in Trainspotting to explore the dark side of university life in Scotlands capital city.

Clique, a twisty tale of friendship, feminism, ambition and death, which arrives online on BBC3 details what happens when Scottish first-year students and best friends Holly and Georgia fall in with a group of wealthy and hedonistic older students and their outspoken mentor, a lecturer at the university. It paints a picture of the city as a party town for privileged southern students in which dark secrets lurk beneath the clinking champagne glasses and lighthearted chat.

The shows creator, 28-year-old Jess Brittain, admits she drew on her own experiences at college when writing the series. It did come out of having a slightly weird and not particularly satisfying university experience, she says. There have been some great university comedies, such as Fresh Meat, but its rare that you have something that looks at what a dramatic and torrid time this can be. Yet its amazing how many people when you ask them didnt actually have the best time at university. I wanted to write something that reflected that.

The result has been hailed as the new Skins, although Brittain, who cut her teeth on the cult teen show her brother Jamie Brittain and father Bryan Elsley were co-creators says that she sees it as a cross between Gossip Girl, The Secret History and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

I went to Leeds rather than Edinburgh but, like my lead characters, I found myself embroiled with a very confident and self-assured group of girls from the south-east, and it was very discombobulating, she says.

A lot of the time that I was there Id feel as though I was in a music video or a Vice magazine article and it was terrifying. There was this sense of a high-gloss, unobtainable life and I wanted to capture that. Edinburgh seemed like the perfect setting because it also has a high proportion of wealthy and confident students from London and the south-east mixing with people from less privileged or more ordinary backgrounds, and as a city it just lends itself to that weird, otherworld thing.

The centre of Clique is the relationship between old friends Holly and Georgia and fellow first-year, Elizabeth, who find themselves drawn to charismatic economics lecturer Jude McDermid (Sherlock star Louise Brealey) and her tight-knit gang of high-achieving star students.

I wanted to capture the terrifying pressures that students are under now, that incredibly pressurised, ambitious and driven feeling that you have to have your shit together at all possible times, says Brittain.

Its come up five or six notches since I was there and I thought God, I had a shit time at uni not because I was under ridiculous amounts of pressure but because I failed socially. Now if youre one of those people like me who fails socially, theres also an additional pressure of well, youd better have decided what youre going to do once you leave, and didnt you do three internships in the summer before you came? And that also all feeds into the social pressure on women to look and be perfect. It seemed as though that would be interesting territory to explore.

The scenes that are most likely to cause controversy involve the ferocious Jude, a woman who dismisses modern feminism as so much clicktivism, and witheringly tells a student who suggests that women still suffer from sexism that they are the problem, thanks to all that moaning on Tumblr and making yourselves the victims. Her scenes are certain to provoke intense debate. Absolutely, admits Brittain. Its a tricky subject writing with any sort of feminist content at the moment. Obviously I am a feminist and thats something Im preoccupied by and interested in but I dont see Jude as a villain. She stands for a sort of response to the whole kind of unease and shame and frustration about not being able to express anything in the public sphere any more without it becoming incredibly heated. I really wanted to look at the thin line between feeling frustrated with how youre supposed to think and then being offered an alternative which can look very alluring but is not all that it seems.

She admits that she is braced for some backlash. I started writing Clique during a relatively quiet time, and then Trump happened and changed everything because a lot of women feel like they are at crisis point, she says. And that has made me slightly nervous that here I am suggesting some slightly controversial things or putting things out to have them discussed and what was a light conversation topic is now a danger point.

She is also keen to stress that Clique tells a very specific tale. Its a thriller, but its also about female friendship and of course if you write something about female friendship then it can rub people up the wrong way because they say, well, thats not my experience, she says. Im not saying this is everyones experience at university, but what I would hope is that it represents a type of insecurity about who you are and how you become an adult. That perpetual state of fuck, were adults, what do we do now? and the knowledge that you have to grow up and sort out who you are and try and go and get a job. I hope Clique captures how that feels.

Even if it does provoke a backlash, Brittain says shes ready for it. Writing for young people, you will never make anything they categorically all love, and thats a good thing because young people have incredibly high standards. Clique will be hated by a lot of people but also hopefully loved by a lot, and Id rather that than people went, hmm, I suppose its OK.

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Feminism, ambition, hedonism: drama explores lives of university's privileged - The Guardian