5 out of 5

Produced by: Jane Startz for Hub Network

covers season 1

I’m not a kid.  I don’t have kids.  But I have an appreciation for good kid-geared media, and sometimes one just takes a chance on a book, or a comic, or a show.  I imagined ‘Spooksville’ was going to be one of the eternal variations on the Goosebumps theme, and the first episode I saw – about a mind-controlling plant taking over a school class in the titular nicknamed town – didn’t dispel that notion.  At the same time, there was something pleasing about the ep: the kid who saved the day, Sally (Katie Douglas), was obviously meant to fill that “quirky outsider” role, along with her friend, Watch (Nick Purcha) and the third member of the lead character triumvirate, Adam (Keean Johnson) – who acts as the bridge for the viewer to “normal” characters – but the script never resorted to stereotypical kid banter to try to sound overly cool or snarky, and even though the first victim of the mind-control plant is a teacher, the writers similarly didn’t cast adults as either the outright bad guys or dolts or the lesson-offering soothsayers.  In other words (pardoning that long-winded sentence): the writing is surprisingly natural, given the genre, and they scored with all of the actors – it never feels like anyone is mugging for the camera or projecting a sensibility that crushes suspension of disbelief.  This makes it easy to actually care about the characters and their adventures, which is important, as beneath the general episodic ‘spooky things happen in Spooksville’ setup, there’s a mystery connecting the town to Adam’s missing mother, and Keean Johnson (and his father, George, played by Steve Bacic) really delivers during some emotional moments.  The production throughout is mostly top-quality, the creators choosing their sets wisely and sticking to practical effects when needed; otherwise, sometimes the computerized / special effects aren’t blockbuster quality, but they’re kept short so it’s not distracting.  The most important thing, though, is that the show is fun, and frequently funny.  Using Christopher Pike’s books as the framework, the writers have continued to come up with plenty of spins on classic concepts – even a great Frankenstein episode – that are enlivened by the charming actors and witty scripts.  As the actors age, hopefully the sense of balance in the writing / acting can remain, as it’s nice to have a show that actually satisfies a need for a Fringe-esque weekly weirdness that, being a kid’s show, isn’t as concerned with continually trying to up the ante to beat prime time ratings.