Skip to navigation

One Star Classics

Nancy Drew

/ Thriller

Nancy Drew is back, this time in the gen-x-pandering, yet millennial-friendly guise the CW is so fond of. (See Riverdale.)

And this time, things have changed.

Nancy Drew, official posterNancy's shady boyfriend, NickNancy's new friend, Bess
Never, not once, does a character not stare pensively off screen in this show.

After a long, fruitful career as a teenage sleuth, Nancy is retired, living the tail end of her teenage years as a high-school student and a server at a local diner. That’s right, this new, gritty take on the 1960s literary icon features a haggard, burnt-out investigator.

But I’ll be damned if she doesn’t get pulled back in for just one last case.

What is the nightmare from her childhood all about? Who killed Tiffany Hudson? Why are a) all the inhabitants of Horseshoe Bay haunted by J-Horror ghosts, and b) why does nobody talk about it? These are baffling mysteries indeed.

Starring as our eponymous hero is Kennedy McMann, who, like the rest of the teens, looks just old enough to be ready to seriously invest in a retirement plan. Impressively, she looks senior to her TV dad, Scott Wolf.

So pretty much everything about Nancy Drew is ridiculous. It is also downright mesmerizing. You’d have to be clinically dead not to find this show entertaining. And credit where credit is due – the cast does a laudable job with scripts delivered by the creators of Gossip Girl. McMann is downright good as Nancy herself.

Make tonight a Nancy Drew night. It’s streaming on HBO Max.

Bonus! The top ten sleuths of our time

  1. Jessica Fletcher
  2. Nan Bobbsey
  3. Frank Hardy
  4. Nancy Drew
  5. Timmy (the dog from The Famous Five)
  6. Freddie Bobbsey
  7. Jonathan Chase (Manimal)
  8. Laura Holt (Remington Steele)
  9. Joe Hardy
  10. Automan

Fun fact about Automan-actor Chuck Wagner: He has served as Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus’s ringmaster since 2005. A true renaissance man.

By Remi,


Ratings from around the web

Icon Site Score
One Star Classics logo One Star Classics 4/6
One Star Classics logo Cumulative Score