Netflix has been awfully quiet about Lockwood & Co., an adaptation of Jonathan Stroud’s book series that has a fairly exciting pedigree. Stroud is a fantastic writer (though I admit to wishing this were an adaptation of the Bartimaeus Sequence), and the show comes from a talent who’s well-known for stories about kids facing down the unexplained: writer-director Joe Cornish, the mind behind Attack the Block and The Kid Who Would Be King.
So why are we just now getting a full trailer, two weeks before Lockwood & Co. premieres? And why’s it so… vague?
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Here’s the summary:
In a world plagued by ghosts, where giant corporations employ psychic teens to battle the supernatural, only one company operates without adult supervision, and its name is Lockwood & Co. Run by Anthony Lockwood, a rebellious young entrepreneur haunted by his mysterious past, his brilliant but eccentric sidekick George and a newly arrived, supremely gifted girl called Lucy, this renegade trio are about to unravel a terrifying mystery that will change the course of history.
If you are wondering why teenagers have to be the ones to hunt ghosts, so am I. Presumably the show will explain. The young cast (Ruby Stokes, Cameron Chapman, and Ali Hadji-Heshmati) seems charming enough, but it’s hard to get a sense of what’s happening here, other than a lot of running and looming. But I’m not one to pass up the promise of feisty swordfights (with magic swords) or talking heads in boxes—or anything from Cornish, for that matter.
Lockwood & Co.’s eight-episode first season arrives on Netflix on January 27th.
