Is Awkward the US high school drama it's OK to like?

Meet Jenna: just a normal teenager

Jenna Hamilton is 2011's Veronica Sawyer from Heathers, swapping diaries for blogging. Like Veronica, she takes control of her own unhappiness, though she does this by pushing herself into new social situations rather than shooting jocks in the head. So far. Jenna's path to self-belief might not involve makeovers, guns or ironic cheerleading but that makes it all the more inspirational.

Even the mean girls have depth

Why are popular girls in teen dramas so mean? It's jealousy, right? Or their relationships with their dads? Also, why are popular girls always thin and beautiful? Maybe it's an American thing but at my school good looks were spread evenly between the popular girls and the girls who liked corduroy and Blink-182. In Awkward, Sadie, the most popular girl in school, is overweight and bitter, winning friends through money and intimidation, but like Kim Kelly in Freaks And Geeks, she's also more than just a bitch.

It knows how to play the generation game

What if your mum was an ex-mean girl? The first time we meet Jenna's mother, she whines, "She is not a size two, I saw her at the club and she was falling out of her tennis shorts. And not in a good way." Later, when she misinterprets Jenna's broken arm as attempted suicide, she remarks, "Why couldn't she be like every other teenager and just starve herself?" But as the series develops, we see she's not just a cartoonish horror mum. She had a child when she wasn't ready, and is desperately forging her own identity while floundering in suburbia, trying to ignore her nagging tragicomic regrets, like getting breast implants instead of going to college.

It smells like teen romance

Matty McKibben is an armpit-sniffing jock who takes Jenna's virginity. He's handsome, sporty and worried about what people will think. He's the perfect teen leading man. However, when nice boy Jake shows an interest in Jenna, what follows is more subtle than the typical screen teen romance: Matty should be the villain but he's clearly also a bundle of teenage confusion.

It's sincere. In a good way

There's something to be said for fictional teenagers who can reel off witty one-liners but it's been ages since we've had a sincere teen show. And teenagers are sincere. So while Gossip Girl shows us the aspirational teen life, Awkward comes pretty close to showing us how it actually is. Awkward shows the stupid mistakes we make when we're in love for the first time and think the way to deal with it is to post a needy Facebook update.