He’s a wealthy jock. She’s a brilliant scholarship student. He’s lived a life of luxury and privilege as heir to his family’s fashion empire. She just wants to secure a spot at Oxford University. They come from two different worlds, yet the growing spark between them is undeniable.

They are James Beaufort and Ruby Bell, the romantic lead characters of Maxton Hall — The World Between Us, Prime Video’s addictive enemies-to-lovers teen drama that’s been quietly sweeping YA lovers off their feet.

And it’s all in German.

When Maxton Hall launched in May 2024, it had the largest first week of global viewership for an international series in Prime Video history, according to Variety. Its popularity proved not to be a fluke. Days after Season 2 premiered on Nov. 7, Maxton Hall surged to the No. 1 spot globally on Prime Video, including in top markets like the U.S., U.K., Germany and Australia.

In an early vote of confidence, Maxton Hall was picked up for a third season months before Season 2 — whose finale will be dropping on Prime Video on Nov. 28 — even arrived.

“It’s unusual for a German project, series or movie to go so viral — especially for German shows … so it’s a huge gift,” Maxton Hall star Harriet Herbig-Matten, who plays Ruby, tells Yahoo. “We have not expect[ed] that at all.”

And while “this plot is not completely new … this whole world has a magic to it. Maxton Hall is its own world,” Damian Hardung, who portrays James, tells Yahoo.

Adapted from the bestselling Maxton Hall trilogy (Save Me, Save You and Save Us) by German author Mona Kasten, the soapy European series has drawn comparisons to other teen streaming hits such as The Summer I Turned Pretty and My Life With the Walter Boys. There’s forbidden romance, class wars, family upheaval and plenty of juicy twists, heartbreaking angst and interrupted first kisses — a modern-day Romeo and Juliet with a dash of Pride and Prejudice.

Set at an elite boarding school located in an idyllic, luscious countryside, Maxton Hall leans in to all the signatures that make a classic teen drama appealing. Entertainment Weekly wrote that the “soothing familiarity is its greatest strength,” while Pajiba applauded Maxton Hall’s “daring and risqué” storytelling. Fans are craving the swoony, star-crossed romance, for which the audience score is at an impressive 92% on Rotten Tomatoes.

While things start off like any other YA drama, Maxton Hall transforms into something deeper and more meaningful as Ruby and James become fully fleshed-out characters with their own crippling blind spots and weaknesses. Over time, they bond over personal challenges, hidden traumas and family secrets, leaning on each other as they endure the peaks and valleys of a coming-of-age romance.

“We all took the characters and what they were going through really seriously,” Herbig-Matten says. “Even if it’s heartbreak or grief — heartbreak is something everyone knows, and everyone knows how it feels like, and maybe they can identify with that feeling, the emotions and the characters.”

Many of Herbig-Matten and Hardung’s favorite Maxton Hall scenes underscore their characters’ emotional evolution: Ruby’s desperate pleas for a spiraling James to get help following his mother’s death, James’s decision to seek therapy and a heartfelt gala speech in which James acknowledges his grief and readiness to love again.

“With James Beaufort, he’s this arrogant guy that we get to know in Season 1, and we’re building him up as this toxic asshole in a way, the real enemy, and making him into a lover who is still deeply flawed,” Hardung says. “But then to take that character people connected to and let him break and deconstruct a lot of those elements in their toxicity and reconstruct them through therapy and through the learning process of understanding true love is something that I deeply connected to.”

It’s vulnerable moments like these that have had a profound impact on viewers.

“When you have characters who might be stereotypically portrayed in one way, and then they turn around and they give you honesty and sincere vulnerability, then you end up feeling safe with them,” Gissane Sophia, indie romance author and editor in chief of Lady Geeks Media, tells Yahoo. “I think everyone, whether they realize it or not, wants to feel safe with the content they consume — and open emotions always help with that.”

One moment from the third episode of Season 1 “sold” Sophia, who was initially hesitant about the show. In the scene, Ruby is pushed into the swimming pool as a prank and has a full-blown panic attack. James dives in to save her and comforts her in the car. It’s then that she reveals the parallels to her father’s boating accident that left him paralyzed, and the guilt she continues to feel over it.

“When we got that moment and we saw how gentle James was and how kind he was and how there was no judgment, it felt so pure,” Sophia says. “This show is exploring vulnerability, and it’s doing it thoroughly.”

All of this would be a moot point without the palpable onscreen chemistry between Herbig-Matten and Hardung, which has led to speculation over their real-life love lives.

“The performances are genuinely so impressive,” Sophia says. “These actors, you can tell that they are really digging in to these characters and embodying them so well. That is where it really shines in that regard — we’re getting good performances, and that makes everything feel twice as earned.”

Cybelle Ferraz, a fan from Brazil who actively posts on X about the series, was intrigued by the various TikTok edits that were flooding her feed about Ruby and James’s relationship before she even pressed play. “The chemistry between the leads is the heart and soul of the whole thing — it’s what pulled me in and kept me hooked,” she tells Yahoo.

“They’re not just [a] romantic [couple], but the kind [of couple] that is two people who are not perfect, who make mistakes, who challenge each other, who clash, who collide, but somehow fit together in the most unexpectedly beautiful way,” Ferraz says of Ruby and James. “They come from totally different worlds with different personalities, but with unreal chemistry.”

It helps that they’re beautiful to watch too.

“But what really pulls you in is how genuinely they love each other,” she says. “They push each other to grow [and] to become better versions of themselves without ever losing their individuality.”

That’s exactly what Herbig-Matten and Hardung hope Maxton Hall continues to convey through Ruby and James’s love story with Season 3 on the horizon.

“That really speaks volumes to the importance of love and our need to figure that out,” Hardung says. “It’s beautiful to have love as a universal language, and why every genre takes it seriously. Coming of age is figuring out life, and I think we’re never too old to try to start or to continue to figure out what this life is and to make sense of our surroundings.”

He adds: “To have the help of a television show that brings us a new lens and fresh eyes, to see that view for the first time, is truly refreshing and, I think, needed to change perspective every now and then.”

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