The most popular TV shows about university life

By Alma Fabiani

Updated Oct 19, 2021 at 02:11 PM

Reading time: 1 minute

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University life—with its charms, events, dramas and fun—has always attracted and inspired producers to film TV shows that will resonate with the hearts of millions of people around the world. After all, student life can be the foundation to a perfect plot, with all the advantages and challenges main characters have to meet. Some series are also filled with out-of-the-ordinary events that will never happen in real life, but at least their episodes still reflect that atmosphere of independence, secrets, great feelings and emotions. Students meet their first love and deal with their first breakup, and get into messes we’ve all encountered. That’s because we love these shows so much that we listed some of the most popular ones about university life.

Coach (1989)

Old, but gold. That’s how we can best describe this TV show. Coach is an American sitcom that was filmed between 1989 and 1997 and is about the coach of the football team at Minnesota State University who tries to ​find the balance between the sports world and family, as his daughter is a student there. The series lets you dive into the world of the football team, difficult relationships between students and their parents, and see that the problems we all face today have not changed much.

Dear White People (2017)

This one is a comedy-drama that sheds light on the racial discrimination going on at Winchester University, where white students make up the majority of the uni’s students. Episodes are filled with satire that reveals the problems students of colour have to deal with when it comes to social justice, biases, and activism.

Fresh Meat (2011)

A comedy series that follows a group of six students (who have nothing in common and are forced to share a home) as they tell viewers about some of the most exciting periods of their lives. The show’s producers perfectly reveal all the messy problems students go through. For example, each of the Fresh Meat characters struggles with juggling exam periods and their part-time jobs, so they didn’t have an opportunity to access the hundreds of essays on everyday life issues that could them.

Gossip Girl (2007)

Privileged teenagers from Manhattan’s Upper East Side try to keep their dirty little secrets from being revealed by the anonymous Gossip Girl blogger. Serena Van Der Woodsen, Blair Waldorf, Chuck Bass, Nate Archibald, and Daniel Humphrey are key figures whose lives seem to be Gossip Girl’s main target.

Watching all the TV shows mentioned above will give you the opportunity to dive into the student world of challenges, decision-making, expectations, love, study and friendship—showing you university life from many different perspectives.

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