Heartbreak High is a popular Australian television series that ran for five years from 1994 to 1999. The series dealt with the students of Hartley High, a tough high school in a multi-racial area of Sydney, and proved to be a more gritty and fast-paced show than many of its contemporaries. It was a spin-off of the 1993 Australian feature film The Heartbreak Kid which had featured Alex Dimitriades and Claudia Karvan. However, in later seasons the show shifted emphasis away from the school setting and the Poulos Family to the students' homes and hangout - the Shark Pool.