New Nancy Drew TV series

[Scott]

So anyone know about this new Nancy Drew show? Variety reports that Freddie Prinze, Jr, will play Nancy Drew's father.

According to Screen Rant:

"Though we aren’t certain of exactly when the CW’s Nancy Drew series will premiere, what we now know thanks to TV Line is that Freddie Prinze Jr. has landed a spot as Nancy’s estranged father, Carson Drew. When the character’s hectic life as an attorney is put on hold due to the death of his wife, Carson finds himself back in his daughter’s life once more. Unfortunately for Nancy, however, her father’s return threatens to uncover dark secrets from his past.

"The CW’s Nancy Drew series came about after much indecision on the part of both CBS and NBC, who tried, but were ultimately unable to get a Nancy Drew TV adaptation off the ground. The eventual announcement that The CW would be taking on Nancy Drew came just a few months after Warner Bros. revealed that they would be releasing a feature film adaptation, entitled Nancy Drew and The Hidden Staircase. The film, starring IT’s Sophia Lillis as the titular character, comes 12 years after Warner Bros.’s initial failed attempt to put Nancy Drew on the big screen. Avoiding the temptation to re-imagine Nancy as an adult - as was the plan of NBC and CBS - both the TV series and the upcoming film keep the character in her teenage years." [emphasis added]

[Scott]

From Variety, a review of the new Nancy Drew movie I never heard of:

...In the case of Warner Bros., the studio bought the rights to the character for just $6,000 back in 1937, and has opted to dust off and remake “Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase” (one of the character’s earliest and most widely read novels, first adapted in 1939) from its own library. And so, Nancy’s back, reborn in the form of super-charismatic, redheaded Sophia Lillis as an assertive, redheaded millennial who embodies the classic character’s best traits — intelligence, independence, and an unerring nose for the truth — while bringing her confidently into the modern world.

...

At first, “Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase” seems to be trying a bit too hard to make her hip, opening with a scene of its namesake skateboarding down the street of fictional small town River Heights. Even without teen musical prodigy Emily Bear singing “More Than Just a Girl” on the soundtrack, it’s obvious that “Poison Ivy” director Katt Shea wants us to know that there’s no underestimating her new-and-improved Nancy Drew — even if most of the characters are constantly doing just that.

Luckily, Nancy has supportive parents and a couple of best friends, Bess (Mackenzie Graham) and George (Zoe Renee), who look on in awe whenever she lays out the logic she uses to puzzle out certain mysteries. But she doesn’t stop there, stepping up to enforce wrongdoing when the situation calls for it. No previous version of Nancy Drew would have reacted to the news that Bess is being picked on at school by breaking into the boys’ locker room and rigging a showerhead to release a chemical that will turn the bully’s skin Smurf blue, recording the whole stunt and streaming it for everyone to see.

That little act of “restorative justice” (as Nancy calls it) lands her a reprimand from Sheriff Marchbanks (Jay DeVon Johnson) — along with some encouraging looks from hunky Deputy Patrick (Andrew Matthew Welch) — and serves as a solid lesson that even noble acts have consequences when she’s ordered to do community service. Nancy soon discovers that picking up trash at the city park is no fun, and so she engineers a more enticing alternative: assisting an eccentric, elderly shut-in (“Alice” star Linda Lavin as Flora) who spray-paints her lawn bright magenta to match the pink flamingos.

Flora lives in a historical mansion, Twin Elms, that she believes is haunted, and while that may sound hokey on paper, what Nancy witnesses — a sparking chandelier, kitchen drawers that open and close on their own, and a faceless figure wearing a satanic pig mask — seems convincing to her too. “And here I thought my cheese was sliding off the cracker!” exclaims Flora. Still, it takes a special kind of brain to explain what’s behind these freaky phenomena, and that’s where Nancy Drew comes in.

...

But here’s the cool thing: The film’s consistently clever script, from empowerment-minded “The Handmaid’s Tale” writers Nina Fiore and John Herrera, isn’t nearly as interested in the mystery as it is in Nancy Drew, or in the circle of characters and relationships that surround her. And that’s the smart way to approach such a case, since the movie was plainly intended to be more than a one-off. It’s easy to imagine further installments, so long as they don’t lose Lillis, who’s currently 17. She’s the freshest thing to happen to Nancy Drew in decades, making it clear that casting was the solution that has so often eluded this series in its jump from page to screen.

[PaulinaAnn]

I saw it last week. I'll write more when I'm not on my kindle.

[mamabear]

I have the season set to record. So far, I'm watching it for the intriguing plot, but there are several differences between it and the books that really bug me. They're mostly little things, but I'm the type that gets bothered over the little things lol. Among others, some of those details include the fact that Bess is dark haired and thin when in the books she's described as being blonde and heavyset. George's last name was changed to Finn instead of Fayne. Nancy's mother died when Nancy was a teen, not when she was just three. And Hannah Gruen so far is nowhere to be found. Obviously, I know any time a book or series of books is adapted to screen, there are going to be differences. But it seems to me that it wouldn't have hurt anything, but rather enriched it, to leave those details the same. Now I'll let the fact that Ned goes by the name of Nick slide, seeing as it takes place in modern times and what teenage boy in his right mind would want to go by his given name if that name was one such as Ned? The rest of the little discrepancies still bug me, but the plot has me interested and I'd like to see where it goes.

I'd also like to add that now that we have a new Nancy Drew series, I'd like to know when we get a new Hardy Boys series!