The comedy series tells of a high school girl named Nancy Drew, 18. After graduating from high school, Nancy looks happy and is thinking of leaving her hometown to study in college. Perhaps things will not go as planned as Nancy finds herself involved in a ghostly murder investigation.
With a reverence for the franchise's lore, a cast that's a delight to watch, and a surprisingly-layered mystery, Nancy Drew has all the makings of The CW's next big hit.
Just as it did in its sullen Archie adaptation Riverdale, the network has squeezed all the light-heartedness and charm out of its characters in favor of morose despondency.
The dialogue in Nancy Drew is similarly cheesy, and, at times, forced and unnatural for the sake of explaining unnecessarily complicated plot developments.
Given the degree to which "Nancy Drew" attempts to coast by on sheer attitude, it should come as no surprise that the mystery is fundamentally uninteresting and that Nancy's friends, in the show's first two hours, are undistinguished.
Making Nancy angrier and more rebellious doesn't make her a stronger character, and taking her away from her roots risks making the show into just a generic slow-burn mystery series with a familiar title.
Consequently, this new Nancy Drew lacks some of Riverdale's self-conscious extravagance, and embraces another (erstwhile) CW property that's recently come back into the spotlight: Veronica Mars.
There are elements... that feel entertaining and nicely updated and the cast is decent, albeit extraordinarily CW-y. But somehow fiction's original teenage girl detective has been brought back to TV in a way that feels primarily derivative.
So sure, a lot of Nancy Drew is silly and contrived and much too easy. Some of the teased-out plot developments are disappointing... Yet, it's a nice complement to Riverdale and, even with the ghosts, is still more low-key and less ridiculous.