What to Watch

More From Decider

Stream It Or Skip It

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Lockwood & Co.’ On Netflix, About Ghost-Hunting Teens Who Try To Solve A Decades-Long Paranormal Invasion

By Joel Keller

Published Jan. 27, 2023, 3:45 p.m. ET
Netflix has certainly cornered the market on paranormal-driven series. Their latest is based on a popular book series about teenage ghost-hunters that fight ghosts that actually kill people.

LOCKWOOD & CO.: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: An array of street lights flicker on as a car parks at the side of a large home. Two teens exit the car while discussing scenarios and the plans they need to go to if those scenarios happen. The Gist: The teens are Lucy Carlyle (Ruby Stokes) and Anthony Lockwood (Cameron Champion), and they’re at this house to rid it of a ghost. The woman who hired them asks why there are no adults, and Lucy says that adults aren’t necessary, due to their “lack of sensitivity.” As they go in and search for the ghost, they realize that there’s another, stronger spirit inhabiting the place, and Lucy feels something from her that she’s never felt from a ghost before.

Advertisement

Flash back 3 years, in an anonymous town. Lucy is 13, just old enough to go to work for a paranormal investigative agency. She has a particular talent for “listening” to apparitions, and her mother basically peddles Lucy to the agency in order to earn money for the family. She does well in her training, but hates the town and man who runs the agency; she plans an escape to London with her best friend, signing a pledge under the picture of a prominent female ghost hunter, “This Will Be Us.” But on a particularly risky mission, the owner of the agency more or less left his team to get killed by a particularly strong ghost. Only Lucy made it out; her best friend is “frozen” by seeing the ghost. The owner blames Lucy to absolve himself in the eye of the licensing board.

Advertisement

Lucy decides to make her way to London, but without ID, most paranormal agencies shut their doors. But she finds an ad for Lockwood & Co., run by Anthony Lockwood and George Karim (Ali Hadji-Heshmati). It’s a new agency, and Lockwood is considered a teen ghost-hunting prodigy. Instead of relying on her CV, he gives her some tests, including showing her a skull in a ghost catcher, something she’s surprised he has. She passes with flying colors. Cut back to the job about a year later. The two hunters barely escape, but Lucy has definitely felt something from the ghost there that was an emotional connection, and she takes a ring off the ghost’s hidden corpse to see if that has anything to do with it.

Advertisement

Photo: Parisa Taghizadeh/Netflix
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The murky, dark visuals of Lockwood & Co. remind us of all of Mike Flanagan’s Haunting series. On our HDR-enabled TV, things were so dark that we couldn’t even see what was going on in places. Our Take: Developed by Joe Cornish (Attack The Block) based on Jonathan Stroud’s popular series of booksLockwood & Co. holds a lot of potential, mainly because of the backstory behind why paranormal agencies like Lockwood & Co. exist. The ghost invasion — dubbed “The Problem” in the press — is a real issue, with people being killed by ghost touches, and an army of teens and young adults seem to be the ones best suited to sense and fight them. It’s been going on for a half-century, resulting in not only the deaths of people touched by the ghosts, but of thousands of young people who have gone to battle with them.

Advertisement

That mystery will be grinding away in the background as Lucy, Anthony and George do their thing. Lucy has an innate ability rarely seen with these young ghost-hunters, and because she’s with an agency run by people her age, she will likely not run into the issue she had at the agency run by a responsibility-shirking adult. There is good chemistry between Stokes and Champion, and we hope that Cornish and his writers wait a long while before having them connect romantically. In fact, we hope they never do that. It’s better that we dig more into their lives and their abilities, and how they work as a team instead of getting distracted by romantic stuff. But there were moments in the first episode that made us think that the romantic angle will be touched on a little bit. As the agency does its work, we’re hopeful to see more of the skills they’ve acquired to fight them, as Lucy and Anthony also unravel what’s behind “The Problem.” Sex and Skin: Nothing, and we’re pretty sure we won’t see any. That said, the show is rated TV-14 because it’s a bit too scary for younger kids. Parting Shot: Having set their client’s house on fire, Lucy and Anthony jump from a second-floor balcony. Sleeper Star: Ali Hadji-Heshmati does a good job as George, the more skeptical of the duo who own Lockwood & Co. Most Pilot-y Line: “Each member of the agency can only take one biscuit at a time in strict rotation,” Anthony tells Lucy during her interview. Seems like a rule that George implemented, which speaks to his character, but it seems like way off the scale of OCD-type tics George would have. Our Call: STREAM IT. Lockwood & Co. is a lively adaptation of the book series, helped along by good chemistry between its leads. Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Where to Stream:

Lockwood & Co.

Powered by Reelgood

Share this:

Load more...
https://decider.com/2023/01/27/lockwood-and-co-netflix-review/?utm_source=url_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons
Copy the URL to share
Exit mobile version