British paranormal/dystopian thriller Lockwood & Co. just debuted on Netflix, and if you're willing to go along on the somewhat implausible ride it's a fun young adult series. Here's the premise: some 50 years ago ghosts began attacking people in the real world; by touching the living they kill them. People can't go out at night without risking death so a permnanent curfew is imposed. When you can't see what wants to kill you, you have a pretty grim world.
Luckily some teenagers turn out to be sensitive to these spirits and can see, hear and otherwise detect them. They're trained to fight them with iron swords, silver chain mail, salt, etc. Ghostbusting companies then recruit such kids once they're trained and pay them to ghostbust professionally. Conspiracies abound in this world, along with a pretty breathtaking complete disregard for the welfare of the kids who are basically saving the world every night.
The series centers around three of these kids, Lucy (a talented but abused and misused fighter who can hear the ghosts), George (the obligatory research nerd) and Anthony Lockwood (the young, boastful owner of a renegade ghostbusting agency). They all seem to be somewhere around 15-16 years old, and yet live like adults as they pursue their ambitions. There's a very subtle romantic tension between Lucy and Lockwood that I expect will be drawn out quite a bit.
The eight episodes are pretty easy to watch, with decent special effects and fairly solid storytelling. You won't see anything new in this show, but it's an interesting mash-up of other ideas. The problem with this one for me was the flawed worldbuilding, which sits on a very rocky foundation and asks the viewer to make too many unlikely leaps of faith. Available on Netflix now.
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