HIGH STREET (Series)
Genre: Drama
Logline: A gambling debt forces a family into a change of scenery that threatens their boundaries, their lives and the status quo of their new communities.
Why it matters: Mental health, addiction and the distortion of family norms are the dominant afflictions of the post-pandemic human condition.
Jackson Winter and his wife Paula argue about a huge financial loss while two teenage boys are shot in the local cemetery. The apparent murder suicide rattles a small town. Forensics, however, reveal that it’s more complicated. Jackson Winter, head football coach and teacher at the local high school, anxiously connects the dots. His gambling debt and ensuing ties to NYC organized crime, and to local drug dealers, point to the deaths. Paula holds down the family, a teenage girl and boy, and her job as assistant principal, but grieving parents are calling for accountability. Jackson abruptly retires amidst burgeoning, albeit rumors of financial impropriety. Another blow-up fight with his wife ends in a surprise phone call.
Winters accepts an interim teaching and full-time coaching gig at a private boarding school sixty minutes west, Thurman Prep. Adjusting to the boarding school classroom, Winters flourishes in recruiting local and national talent. Living alone on campus for the winter and spring, local ties lead Jackson to other distractions – his addiction to high profile, straight line, underdog betting through a local bookie, Noodles. By association, Noodles forges a partnership with drug-dealing lesbians who front as landscapers. Paula’s dream of a “forever home” on the shore is crushed, but Jackson leverages a winning bet to save their marriage. Paula’s career as assistant principal is flawless. Still, grieving mothers back home want answers. Their son can’t wait to start over, but the daughter is negotiating to “stay put” when a family move is initiated.
Noodles invests Jackson’s earnings in the local lesbian drug traffic that has ties to local public – and private school students. An unexpected opening at Thurman leads the school into a two-fer, the dreaded husband-wife faculty combo. Paula will join Thurman as the dean of students in July. Family move. Angry daughter. Jackson’s unencouraged by spring football, but he and Noodles poach some of the top local football talent. Noodles has a son “destined” for Thurman. A couple of weeks before the arrival of his family, minus his daughter, Jackson and his coaching staff make a trip to Atlantic City. It’s the Saturday of the Kentucky Derby. That weekend, a student at Thurman overdoses. Jackson returns worse for the wear and Noodles blackmails his boy into Thurman. Summer is in the air, and the landscaping business flourishes.
Why it will succeed: Bad ass females v. toxic masculinity. It’s destined to whet the appetite and go down easy.