Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Nancy Drew’ On The CW, Where The Teen Sleuth Gets A Makeover To Look More Like Veronica Mars

Nancy Drew, originally conceived as a female counterpart to the Hardy Boys, has been solving mysteries in print, on film and on TV since 1930. Her most famous screen iteration is likely the Pamela Sue Martin version from the late ’70s, where she and her friend George Fayne solved a new mystery every episode. But in 2019, things can’t be that simple. After two big-screen reboots, Nancy is back on the small screen with a new backstory and a season-long mystery to solve. Read on for more…

NANCY DREW: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A dark cliff over the ocean, and a woman in a prom dress who ends up going over the edge.

The Gist: Ever since Nancy Drew (Kennedy McMann) saw her parents digging something up when she was a child, she has been fascinated with solving mysteries in the darkest places. One case that has always intrigued her was Lucy Sable, who was crowned Sea Queen of Horseshoe Falls, Maine, in 2000, and promptly fell off a cliff. “Some say she still haunts our town,” Nancy says in voice over.

But a year after she was crowned Sea Queen, Nancy’s life is not where she thought it would be. Her mother died of cancer and she had a falling out with her father Carson Drew (Scott Wolf); she stopped solving mysteries around town; and she tanked her grades and decided to stay home after high school rather than apply to her dream school, Columbia. She’s a waitress at The Claw, the local watering hole, having sex with a local boat mechanic named Ned “Nick” Nickerson (Tunji Kasim), and saving to reapply to college and bolt her hometown.

One night during the summer festival, Nancy is at work with her manager, George Fan (Leah Lewis), whose mom has a checkered past, Ace (Alex Savon), a supposed pothead, and Bess Marvin (Maddison Jaizani), a socialite who seems to be “slumming it” in Horseshoe Falls for the summer. After closing, the richest guy in town, Ryan Hudson (Riley Smith), barges in for a “business meeting,” and George asks Nancy to bring a salad to Ryan’s wife Tiffany (Sinead Curry), who’s waiting outside. After she gets back to the restaurant, the lights go out. Nancy goes back out to the car and finds Tiffany’s been murdered.

The sheriff brings everyone at The Claw in, but seems to suspect Nancy, mainly because she used to solve cases he couldn’t. Det. Karen Hart (Alvina August) vouches for her, as she’s been close to the family for some time. Nancy vows she won’t look into it, but when she breaks into the Hudsons’ house and finds a mysterious pendant, she reluctantly seeks help from George and Bess. She also finds solace in the arms of Nick, but then finds out she shouldn’t have. What other mysteries will she uncover as she investigates this murder?

Our Take: One of the feelings we kept getting while watching the first episode of this new version of Nancy Drew is that it felt more like Veronica Mars than the adventures of the teen from the classic novels for kids, or even the late ’70s series starring Pamela Sue Martin (Martin, by the way, plays a guest role in this series). A teen sleuth who talks in voice over about her dark life and the secrets that her little town holds. She lives with her father, albeit in a more tense relationship than Veronica and her dad. And they both want to blow their insular shore towns but keep getting drawn back.

But instead of the rapid-fire quips from VM, we get a slow-paced pilot with dialogue that’s supposed to elicit a smile but instead falls flat. Josh Schwartz, of Chuck and Gossip Girl fame, is one of the executive producers (Noga Landau adapted the novels for this series and Melinda Hsu Taylor is the showrunner), so we know that he likes to balance drama and humor in equal amounts. But things play out so slowly in this pilot, we quickly lost interest.

Here’s the other thing about the pilot that bugged us: Assigning the classic characters’ names to new characters always strikes us as nothing more than a symbolic nod to the original work. But these characters are so thoroughly different, keeping the names makes no sense. Also, dragging out this mystery through the entire season, with Nancy finding out how everyone that’s around her is connected to the case in one way or another, sounds torturous to us, because the victim wasn’t that compelling to begin with. There’s a supernatural element, involving the death of Lucy Sable, that has to be looked into and debunked. It just feels like impediment after impediment is thrown in Nancy’s way. Why couldn’t this have been made into a case-of-the week-show?

Sex and Skin: We hear Nancy having sex with Nick. For one reason or another, they go from casual sex partners to star-crossed lovers in the blink of an eye, a change that doesn’t feel at all earned.

Parting Shot: “Why is it the ones you love most have the most to hide?” Nancy says as she finds a bloody dress in the attic of her house.

Sleeper Star: Leah Lewis is the best part of the pilot as George Fan. Her character delivers some of the quippiest lines, and she starts the series as someone who isn’t a huge fan of Nancy’s, though we don’t know why.

Most Pilot-y Line: Nancy to her dad, who is a defense attorney: “Karen was totally out of line calling you. I didn’t ask for a lawyer.” Carson: “How about a father? You’re still living under my roof.” Nancy: “That’s more than I can say for you.”

Our Call: SKIP IT. Maybe we’re not the target audience, but the pilot of Nancy Drew committed the cardinal sin of being outright boring to watch.

Your Call:

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Nancy Drew On CWTV.com