Whodunit? Everyone!

I decided to watch School Spirits on Netflix because I was a little bored with Asian dramas, and managed to get through all eight episodes without giving up, although sometimes I was tempted. This is a somewhat odd high school drama with some merits: none of the actors are famous or especially attractive, the premise is not the usual high school nonsense, and the story does move along at an okay pace.

The series follows the sad tale of Maddie Nears, a teenage spirit who wakes up at her high school to discover she's disappeared in real life. She meets other ghosts who assure her that she's dead, and was probably murdered, although no one has found her body yet. The already dead spirits (which includes one earnest teacher who is trying to get everyone to accept their death and cross over) help Maddie investigate her murder. She's hindered by the fact that she can't leave the school premises and has too many suspects. A bonus turns out to be Maddie's best friend, Simon, who is the only living person who can see her.

I had a lot of problems with some of the excessively skewed storytelling choices, such as how every adult in the series is depicted as either criminal, idiotic, ineffectual or uncaring. Maddie is presented as the only adult, honestly. I know that's all done to cater to the kids, but if you want the grownups to take it seriously, a range of more realistic adults would be better.

Unhappily there are far, far too many red herrings and suspects. Two or three would have been standard, four a stretch but okay, but they went with five. I got tired of the suspicion shifts moving at lightning speed; not even the Kennedy assassination had so many conspiracies. The character of Maddie's single parent alcoholic mother is so over the top atrocious that in reality the kid would have been taken away from her and put in foster care long, long ago.

By the time I got to the last episode and got the solution to the puzzle (which wasn't a solution, because there will be a season two) I'd already decided I'd had enough. I'm not going to recommend this one unless you're a teen who hates all adults, in which case you will probably adore it.

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