Season 1
10 episodes May 12, 2023 5.1
Overview
Over a tense summer on the Belgian coast, a wealthy friend group faces adulthood's harsh realities while grappling with love and societal expectations.
Seasons
4 listed- Status
- Ended
- Seasons
- 3 seasons
- Episodes
- 26 episodes
- First aired
- May 12, 2023
- Last aired
- Apr 3, 2026
- Episode length
- 35m
- Network
- VRT 1
Latest episode: S3 E8 Reign of Terror (Apr 3, 2026)
Season 2
8 episodes Dec 6, 2024 5.5
Season 3
8 episodes Apr 3, 2026 2.5
Specials
0 episodes
Cast
12 people
Reviews
5 min readThe Sea Doesn’t Care About Your Problems
I kept waiting for High Tides to drown. Not in the literal sense—though there’s plenty of water, and more than one character takes a plunge—but in the way so many glossy, soapy dramas do: by mistaking surface tension for depth. Three seasons in, it hasn’t.
That’s both its greatest trick and its most frustrating limitation.
The show unfolds in Knokke, Belgium’s most expensive seaside town, where the sand is white, the villas are vast, and the teenagers are rich, bored, and perpetually on the verge of ruining their lives. At the center are Louise (Pommelien Thijs) and Alex (Willem De Schryver), best friends since childhood, now navigating the slippery transition from adolescence to adulthood. Their bond is the show’s emotional core, but it’s also its most volatile element—equal parts devotion and destruction, a love story without the sex, or maybe a friendship with too much of it.
What makes High Tides compulsively watchable isn’t the plot—God knows, it’s not the plot—but the way it lingers in the in-between moments. The camera loves these kids, especially Louise, whose bipolar disorder is portrayed with a rawness that feels rare for a teen drama. Thijs doesn’t play her as a walking diagnosis; she’s impulsive, magnetic, and exhausting, a whirlwind of highs and lows that leave the people around her breathless.
In one scene, she dances on a table at a beach club, laughing too loud, her body moving like she’s trying to outrun her own thoughts. The next, she’s curled in bed, staring at the wall, her silence heavier than any dialogue could be. It’s in these quiet, unguarded moments that the show feels most alive.
The adults, too, are given more dimension than the genre usually allows. Anna Drijver plays Louise’s mother, a woman whose own struggles with mental health cast a long shadow over her daughter’s life. There’s a scene in Season 1 where she sits Louise down and says, “I know what it’s like to feel like you’re falling apart,” and for once, the line doesn’t feel like a soap opera cliché.
Audience Opinions
Audience 7.2/10
"A glossy seaside soap with striking leads and scenery that stays compulsively watchable despite formulaic plotting and messy morals."
Glamorous coastal locations, a fast pace, and committed performances from the young cast make the story of rich kids and their parents easy to binge, with some praising the richer-than-usual focus on adult characters and family backstories. latestnetflix.com's view is that at the same time, the plot leans heavily on familiar teen-drama clichés, polarizing character choices, and season-to-season dips in quality, with some finding the show shallow, frustrating, or overly romantic about cheating and bad behavior.
What viewers praise
- Beautiful coastal setting The Belgian seaside backdrop, upscale villas, and beach clubs give the series a lush, escapist visual appeal.
- Engaging lead duo Performances from Pommelien Thijs and Willem De Schryver stand out as above-average and anchor the emotional core.
- Highly bingeable pacing Episodes move quickly with enough intrigue and cliffhangers that many end up watching whole seasons in a couple of sittings.
- Parents given real depth Adult characters are treated as full people with their own flaws and storylines instead of simple background figures.
- Different angle on wealth The show offers a perspective where affluent characters still face serious problems, countering the idea that money erases all struggles.
Common complaints
- Soap-style clichés Storylines are packed with familiar tropes such as love triangles, rich-versus-poor tensions, and melodramatic twists that can feel predictable.
- Uneven across seasons Season 2 is often called weaker and less focused than the first, with a noticeable drop in energy and use of the Knokke setting.
- Morally grating behavior Frequent cheating and betrayal are framed romantically or as self-discovery, which some find uncomfortable or lacking in consequences.
- Unlikable main characters Key figures, especially Alex and at times Louise, are described as deeply irritating or toxic, making it hard to root for anyone.
- More style than substance The glossy look and attractive cast can feel like a distraction from thin plotting and limited character growth.
Recommended for
Teen drama enthusiasts Coastal-set soap fans European series completists Love-triangle addicts Wealthy-youth drama viewers
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsNetflix billed season 3 as the end. Then the cast crashed Pommelien Thijs's concert with a clapperboard.
The surprise at AFAS Dome was not a cameo. Fellow High Tides actors walked onstage during Thijs's Saturday night show, held up a sign that read "Pommelien, vergeet je niets?" and announced Knokke Off: De Film. Thijs posted that night. The clapper in the photos has Netflix on it. latestnetflix.com's read is that what's on Netflix reported the feature is in production with Dingie, Dutch FilmWorks, and VRT, the same companies that made the series.Plot, returning cast, and date are still a secret. 
That is a lot of nerve for a show the streamer had just called finished. On December 11, 2025 Netflix said season 3, out worldwide except Belgium on April 3, 2026, would be the last. Louise, Thijs's character, comes home from a psychiatric stay. Alex and Daan are hiding things. The Vandael real estate empire is wobbly. Daan Schuurmans joins as sworn enemy Anton Vermeer. Anthony Schatteman directs. Luk Wyns writes. The City of Knokke-Heist is still in the credits.
They sanded the Flemish title off. The town still got the billboard.
English viewers met this as High Tides. At home it is Knokke Off, created by Anthony Van Biervliet, shot in the title town in summer 2022, dropped on VRT MAX on May 12, 2023. Ten episodes logged more than seven million videostarts in four months, half of them from viewers aged 13 to 34, the group public TV usually cannot find. VRT 1 then put the first two episodes in front of about 500,000 live and another 400,000 time-shifted. Netflix Netherlands had it on July 19. The rest of the world got the renamed package on December 7, 2023, with an English dub sitting next to the Flemish track. ,
Writer Luk Wyns posted that the second global week put the show fifth among non-English series, about 3.3 million views. It hit number two in Germany, Argentina, Uruguay, and Spain. Humo gave it four stars and called it more exciting and more daring than the rest of VRT fiction that spring. De Standaard's Marc Reynebeau called it "absolutely unbelievable" and wanted it off his screen. Both takes are useful. The show is a rich-kid soap that the algorithm treated like Outer Banks. , ,
Season 2 landed on Netflix on March 21, 2025 after a delay. Season 3 still cracked the weekly Top 10 in April 2026 with 1.6 million views. Thijs is also a pop star, which is why a concert was the right place to walk back a finale. Knokke paid to be the location. Netflix paid to keep the brand. The movie is how you admit the "final" season was a marketing season. ,
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.