What the new High Fidelity TV series gets right, and what it doesn't

The show is caught between serving a nostalgic audience and trying to find its own voice.

The opening scene of High Fidelity, the 2020 TV series, opens in an almost identical way to Stephen Frears' 2000 film. So much so that I pressed pause and baulked a little.

Why, 20 years after the film adaptation of Nick Hornby's 1995 book, were we seeing this story again?

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Frears' film version of High Fidelity. As a music fan in her early 20s still searching for and shaping my identity, it was the ultimate Shazam into a world of sonic history.

Two decades later, and with the music industry turned upside down, Shazam is the only mention of new technology you’ll see in High Fidelity 3.0.

But let’s get you up to speed first.

High Fidelity is the story of Rob Fleming, the owner of London record store Championship Vinyl. Alongside his employees Dick and Barry, they dish out advice and judgement to all who walk through their door, and curate Top 5 lists to show off their music knowledge to anyone who’ll listen.

The 2000 film shifted the story to Chicago, and this year's TV series moves it to Brooklyn, but flips the cast.

Instead of three white men in their 30s, this new High Fidelity shows Rob as a queer black woman (played by Zoë Kravitz), her ex-boyfriend and current bestie Simon (David H. Holmes) is a gay white man, and Cherise (played wonderfully by Da'Vine Joy Randolph), a straight black woman, taking on the role Jack Black made iconic.

It goes without saying that the canon of pop culture is a story that has largely been told by one dominant group, so I’m all for broadening the perspectives.

Kravitz as Rob displays the same kind of arrested development Cusack did, and her search for what went wrong in her past relationships treads a similar path.

Early on, however, the faithful following of the dialogue just didn’t resonate with me.

In my own experience, I’ve never come across a female critic or collector that has been so molecularly punishing about music. Who has been willing to spout their Top 5 at the drop of a hat, to anyone who’ll listen.

For so many reasons – none of them ability or knowledge – this just doesn't happen. So, to flip a character but have them deliver the same dialogue didn’t feel authentic.

Beyond gender, the gatekeepers in music have shifted and, in some cases, disintegrated. The democratisation of the internet means that we can all try it on, we can all be the critics, and we all can be the collectors of vast amounts of music.

Yes, record stores, DJs, and trusted friends remain important influences in educating me in unknown discoveries to this day. But their clout has diminished in a digital world, for better or worse.

Between 2000 and today, streaming has become dominant. Amassing the perfect record collection and knowing it all it is a moot point. It's noteworthy that the only two mediums for sale at Championship Vinyl in the TV series are vinyl and cassette tapes. It clings to a certain kind of nostalgia ("it just sounds warmer") as if digital technology like CDs, much less streaming, never existed.

Which brings me to the music.

A lot has happened in 20 years. Unsurprisingly, the team of music supervisors on the series almost outnumbers the cast, and setting a show in a record store means there are plenty of Easter eggs to worm their way into your brain.

It’s wonderful to hear our own Gabriella Cohen sit alongside David Bowie, Ann Peebles, and ESG in the soundtrack.

But I was taken aback that most of the conversations around music still centred on the classics. Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles, Prince, even Dexy’s Midnight Runners get dissected and revered, to the detriment of modern records that have shaped the culture and provided the soundtrack to our lives since 2000.

OutKast gets a nod, but while Cherise dons a Lauryn Hill tee, there is no mention of The Miseducation…, and a record store set in New York City not clocking LCD Soundsystem or The Strokes seemed odd.

The infamous Beta Band scene, a perfect example of Rob’s sense of musical superiority, gets duplicated in the TV series, yet this time it’s Swamp Dogg, a cult artist from Washington DC, who gets the nod.

Not long afterwards, Beta Band's 'Dry the Rain' plays on the stereo of Championship Vinyl anyway; a pointed reminder that the show is caught between serving a nostalgic audience and trying to find its own voice.

There is much to love about this series. The sheer simplicity of leaving your house, hitting the streets, strolling into coffee shops, bars and venues seems like a dream now, and I relished being reminded of that gift of shared community.

The rush of walking into a gig and being gobsmacked by the unknown you see on stage made me yearn for a return to live music. And I’ll watch any series set in New York; the greatest city on the planet.

I loved the discovery and recommendations, new and old. There’s a scene where Simon introduces William Onyeabor to a customer who beams broadly, as though a doctor has just passed him the perfect prescription.  I’ve been Googling non-stop.

And I like that some viewers may find a window into a world they previously felt shut out of, because of how it was told before.

There is a push to recreate old stories because familiarity sells, and there is a push to recontextualise and update those stories because many of them had serious problems in the first place.

But the onus to remake tales with a gender and culturally diverse cast but use the same source material is inherently flawed.

Who asked for this? And, by the way series one ended, where to from here?

High Fidelity is streaming on ABC iview now. It also airs on ABC Comedy at 9pm Thursday nights.