Nancy Drew has been around for a long time. A fictional character from a bunch of novels written by numerous ghost writers, the small-town sleuth first appeared in the 1930s. There have been 533 Nancy Drew books, she’s featured in 5 films, 3 TV shows and a few computer games. She’s been a teenager for 60 years.
Basically, if you haven’t heard of Nancy Drew, are you even alive?
This week, the latest rendition of Nancy Drew hits 10 PEACH and 10 play, and while she’s still a sleuth and a teenager, this version of the show is made by the makers of Riverdale and the creators of awesome shows like The O.C., Gossip Girl, Dynasty, Runaways and this week’s everyone-must-binge, Looking For Alaska.
So what does that mean? It means sex and the supernatural. Hell yeah! Oh, and crime. Obviously crime.
When we first meet new Nancy, she’s getting her rocks off with Ned Nickerson, a guy she’s been seeing on the DL (but also on again/off again for 60 years and always a white guy until now). She’s working at a diner because she bombed in high school after her mother died, thereby ruining her university chances, and she lives with her lawyer dad, Carson Drew (Scott Wolf, who no one in Australia has seen since Party Of Five).
Everyone’s been talking about the Riverdale-y-ness of this Nancy Drew. And sure, it’s there.
But probably the two obvious influences are Twin Peaks, sans the really quirky-but-brilliant-weirdness (Nancy’s diner uniform tho), and Veronica Mars.
So much Veronica Mars. (Though as Vulture pointed out, Twin Peaks and Veronica Mars were both influenced by Nancy Drew, so this has all come full circle).
Where Riverdale pretends things are about to get supernatural, Nancy is literally seeing the ghost of a girl who fell off a cliff and is referred to around town as “Dead Lucy”. And some of those moments are legit scary.
But this is not really a supernatural show. Just like real life, the spooky bits are just an added extra. Something that exists in the periphery but is still connected to the main story.
And the main story is murder. And everyone is a damn suspect. Including Nancy, who’s keen to solve the mystery.
And how’s she gonna do that? Well she’s Nancy Drew, isn’t she. She’s armed to the teeth with intelligence, sass, dry wit, total independence, enormous courage, disregard for rules, the law, anything her dad says. Etc.
Crime, sex and ghosts, people.
And a strong female protagonist who after 60 years continues to serve as a role model for the girls.
Nancy Drew premieres 9.00 Thursday on PEACH, then you can…
