Nearing the end of our first year at Cambridge, my friends and I crammed around my laptop, propped up on a few cushions, and put on Boarders for the first time. Following five Black inner-city teens navigating classism, racism and the strange initiation rites of the privately educated at their new elite boarding school, the show immediately felt familiar. Being some of the few BAME students in our cohort, we had spent the past year acclimatising to an environment shaped by the social politics of rich white kids. We were thus both awed and spooked by just how precisely Boarders captured our own encounters.

From cringing at microaggressions to laughing raucously at the main characters’ banter (and their surprisingly accurate usage of MLE), we finished the first season in a single night. The show deftly satirised well-worn debates around diversity, equity and inclusion in education by grounding them in relatable student experiences. But what gripped us most was its depiction of friendship: the rarity of finding people from similar backgrounds, the reliance on each other in difficult seasons and the bond that keeps you sane within the ivory tower. It’s safe to say that Boarders  quickly became our comfort show.

“The structural parallels between the lives of the characters and my own group takes on powerful resonances”

Now in its last season, with the main group revising for their A-levels and preparing to leave school, they face a new kind of transition. Having both received offers to study at Oxbridge, Leah (Jodie Campbell) and Toby (Sekou Diaby) respond to the pressure to succeed in very different ways. While Leah, determined to prove her academic worth, studies intensely until her “vision blurs,” Toby becomes increasingly disillusioned by how fast things around him are changing, hoping instead to hold on to what was. Although the stressful results day charge is behind all of us now, watching the final season in our final year of university means that the structural parallels between the lives of the characters and my own group takes on powerful resonances once more.

With graduation looming, some of us may be gleefully counting down the days until we are finally free, running headfirst toward the future. Others may instead be nursing a sense of wistful loss as they plough through the last bits of their lecture content. For myself, the prospect of leaving the safe space my friends and I have forged over the years – from clinging to each other for stability as fresh-faced 18-year-olds to slowly finding our feet – feels less like a progression and more like a rupture.

“The show reminds us that coming of age is not only about where we are going”

Hearing the gloomy reports of fewer entry-level vacancies and serial unsuccessful job applications, uncertainty appears to define early adulthood for many graduates. Nevertheless, even if the future feels increasingly untethered, the present has become something my friends and I hold onto more intentionally. In between revision sessions and spells of frantic dissertation writing, we carve out small moments of respite: late-night films, chaotic games of Imposter and ridiculous debates over the best college brunch spots. We laugh until our sides hurt from our half-serious predictions about our futures and reassure each other with words of acquired wisdom when anxiety threatens to creep back in.

On the cusp of leaving a world we spent years learning how to navigate, one that has shaped us in ways we are only beginning to understand, Boarders seems to have earned its place in becoming a soon-to-be Black British TV classic. The show reminds us that coming of age is not only about where we are going, but who we carry with us along the way.