CBS has announced its latest reboot subject: Nancy Drew.
We have reached Peak Reboot, a point beyond which we surely cannot possibly go any further. It needs to stop. The television industry owes us better than this, and it knows it. It’s not what audiences have been asking for, and they’ve been backing their asks with their time and their patronage: Television is turning more and more into a legitimate art form, with stunningly beautiful, well-crafted shows getting huge turnout from viewers who are excited about the narrative and artistic possibilities of television. As we face down a television landscape filled with elegance and beauty, networks persist in shoving reboots down our faces.
Minority Report. Fuller House. The X-Files. Heroes Reborn. Limitless. Rush Hour. Guardians of the Galaxy. Uncle Buck. Twin Peaks. MacGyver. Coach. Wet Hot American Summer. The Muppets.
And now, Nancy Drew.
The teen sleuth has already been through a few reboots of her own. A generation of kids may have grown up reading her classic adventures (and wondering when Nancy and George will make out already), but she’s changed rather a lot from the chipper driver of a cute roadster. Over the years, she’s been sexed up a few times to bring her in line with modern sensibilities, as the original series feels sort of quaintly out of date for all but the most nostalgic of readers.
A series of films in the 1930s drew upon the original series, but she didn’t return to the silver screen again until 2007, with a mediocre Warner Brothers production that seemed woefully out of step when compared with Veronica Mars, which stopped airing in the same year. Numerous attempts at serialising Nancy Drew for television (1957, 1977-1979, 1989, 1995, and 2002) flopped, with creators evidently unable to adapt the work for TV. Now, the producers of Grey’s Anatomy are having a go.
Critics are floating a huge array of reasons for rebootapalooza, which is taking the television world by storm. Turn around and you’ll be smacked with a reboot, even though many seem to fizzle out — though Netflix has seen some success with cult classics like Arrested Development, it doesn’t have to live up to merciless ratings scrutiny like networks do. Nancy Drew could find herself dead in the water very rapidly if CBS can’t build up an audience for her quickly enough, and with a huge array of procedurals to choose from, viewers are getting more choosy about what they’ll watch — one reason police shows flicker on and off the television schedule so quickly.
It may just be the sheer volume of television in the United States, with hundreds of new scripted shows alongside reality television and improv programmes. The US television landscape is awash in material, and in that environment, perhaps it’s difficult to be original, creating an incentive to return to the classics. Some have a hope of reviving beloved television properties to attract nostalgic viewers and intrigue new ones who perhaps weren’t around for the original go-round. Others may be interested in legitimate reinterpretation — Hannibal was a striking example — and an exploration of material with new depth, or from a different perspective. Others are casting to fill holes on a television schedule with high demands, especially since programmes are only allowed a short period of time to establish themselves, which means that many are booted in favour of midseason pickups. Producers have to be ready to slot something new in at a moment’s notice, always with the dreary and looming threat that their show will suffer the same fate.
Nancy Drew is emerging into a rather hostile television landscape. The bar is generally low for procedurals in terms of plotting and production quality, but that’s what makes them so ubiquitous, and it’s why they drop like flies. To stand out, the show may have to make itself more edgy, which will turn off some audiences, making network executives hesitant to allow the producers to stray too far from the fold.
It’s also unclear what the target audience would be. The show pitches Drew as a detective in her 30s with the NYPD, and is clearly aimed at young adults, not the children and teens who originally read the series. Older adults, preferring the like of NCIS (still consistently the highest-rated procedural drama on air), are unlikely to be interested, and younger adults may be drawn away from the show in favour of more original programming. Nancy Drew sounds suspiciously like Kate Beckett on Castle, for example, and a slew of other perky female detectives in their thirties setting out to fight crime while looking cute doing it — and of course navigating a post-Sex and the City New York. Perhaps they can do a crossover episode with Girls.
The network is banking on Nancy Drew’s staying power as an iconic cultural figure. It might be a good bet — audiences are nothing if not consistent when it comes to their beloved pop culture icons. Or it might prove disastrous, highlighting the fact that networks are often out of step with the audiences they’re attempting to target.
One thing is for certain: Once you reach the point of a Nancy Drew reboot, it’s painfully obvious that the reboot trend needs to be brought to a merciful end. We’re counting on the networks to do the right thing and get original — even if it means less programming — because this is simply getting unbearable.