Always a little behind the times, I took around three decades to get around to watching “Press Gang”, despite owning the DVD collection for two of those decades. I thought I’d probably left it too late, as 80s and 90s teen TV has generally aged poorly, but I ended up being pleasantly surprised. Sure, the fashion is a bit iffy, but the soul of the series holds up well even today.

I wish I’d watched “Press Gang” back in the day because I really could’ve used having a character like Lynda to see myself in. Like me, she’s ambitious, driven, goal-focused… and absolutely rubbish at people. It’s not that she doesn’t have a good heart, but rather that emotions are a confusing and irritating distraction from more important things—especially when those emotions are her own. Her single-mindedness makes her an excellent editor, but it’s at the expense of human relationships, something that she touches upon occasionally but never in any real depth. She has Kenny, her ever-patient best friend and assistant editor, and Gazette head-writer Sarah, but they both leave her eventually, and that comes as no surprise.

At the beginning of her friendship with Sarah, Lynda says that everyone leaves her, as a way to manipulate Sarah, but it’s a manipulation based on truth. Lynda is too much for most people to handle. She’s hard work, she’s abrasive, and she is quite terrible at offering the comfort and understanding that most people want from a friend. To be fair, she doesn’t expect to receive that kind of care, either. Lynda might be difficult, but she’s rarely a hypocrite. She does what she thinks is the right thing to do, and she’s loyal to the people she cares for, even if they can’t see that, obscured as it is by her harsh tongue and abrasive ways.

And then, of course, there’s Spike, Lynda’s on-off boyfriend. He wants Lynda from the moment he meets her, but she takes a while to warm to him, and even longer to admit that she has feelings for him as well. “Press Gang” is partially the story of the push-pull relationship between Lynda and Spike and, while the later series don’t quite maintain the antagonistic chemistry of the show’s beginning, there is still the feeling that Lynda needs to be with someone like Spike, who will call her out when she behaves badly, but still love her for who she is, instead of despite of it.

Importantly, “Press Gang” never punishes Lynda for being a strong-minded woman who puts her work before her emotions. It’s not that Lynda never suffers negative consequences of her actions, but rather that bad things don’t happen to her simply because of the person she is. If anything, the powerful people in her life are too accepting, too willing to uplift her as a young woman of exceptional talent. I’m more than happy to overlook a little lack of realism on that count, though, as I would far prefer young female media consumers were offered too much hope for future success rather than too little.

Lynda’s a great character because she remains herself throughout the entirety of “Press Gang”. There’s no softening, no adoption of a more palatable kind of femininity, and I wish there had been a lot more Lynda’s to be found in my childhood media consumption, instead of an endless parade of girls casting off their tomboy personalities the moment that puberty began.