Brief Story Line
Story was set in the alternate London after it experienced "The Problem" where ghosts would appear all over the city at night and attacking the living. To solve this issue, the government invoked night curfew and created Department of Physical Research and Control (DEPRAC). There were also independent agencies formed to assist and protect the people for a certain fee. The agents consisted of teenagers as only certain children and teens were able to sense and ultimately fend off the ghosts, although they would be supervised by adults.
Lucy Carlyle (Ruby Stokes - Bridgerton TV series, A Banquet etc) was a 15 year old very gifted girl who after an incident in her home town, decided to go to London to apply in the largest agency called Fittes. But she ended up joining a small agency called Lockwood & Co, led by Anthony Lockwood (Cameron Chapman) with his only other associate George Karim (Ali Hadji-Heshmati). Their first major case involved the ghost of someone who had died many years before in a haunted house, which would lead them to a far greater mystery and cases.
So what would happen to Lockwood & Co? You could find out in the first season of the series.
End of Brief Story Line
Well that was really fun. When I saw the trailer to the series earlier, it reminded me a lot of Ghostbusters, except here the hunters were teenagers and it was set in London. Although I am not a big fan of supernatural movies/series, I wanted to give this a try as the ghosts seemed to be in the form of transparent glowing spirits rather than the really scary images. And it turned out to be correct. The ghosts here were not as frightening as I worry. Even though there were few jump scare scenes but it did not make it so terrifying that would be embedded in my memory. This might explain the series classified for 13+, probably because it was not so disturbing and violent.
The story here was very unique where the world was somehow experiencing that mysterious event and only children/teens that could sense the ghosts. It make it very interesting as the main characters were teens fighting against ghosts. And for me the cast were truly amazing. Ruby Stokes was perfect in her role as the listener who was not so confident at first but became better as the story progressed. Meanwhile Cameron Chapman was awesome as Lockwood. He was charming and dashing plus a natural leader. And Karim was a fun character to watch with Ali Hadji-Heshmati managed to perform his role nicely.
Aside from the 3 lead cast, there were other support characters such as Inspector Barnes (Ivanno Jeremiah) from DEPRAC, Lockwood's fiercest competitor Kipps (Joel Bandeira) and Penelope Fittes (Morven Christie - The Bay TV series etc). I also saw familiar faces of Ben Crompton (Game of Thrones TV series etc) as Winkman and Louise Brealey (Sherlock TV series etc) as Pamela Joplin. There was a mysterious character as well, later known as Golden Blade (Luke Treadaway - A Street Car Named Bob etc).
In the opening credit, we could catch brief information on the incident and I noticed the series was based on the novel by Jonathan Stroud. After further reading, I found out that the first season was based on the first 2 novels of the series, titled The Streaming Staircase and The Whispering Skull. There were altogether 5 novels so there is definitely room for new seasons which I really hope there would be. Btw, the series was developed by Joe Cornish (writer of Ant-man) who also directed the first and eighth episode. In general I like all the episodes in here as the story was exciting and at just the right pace to keep me interested without getting bored. There were also adequate actions involved in catching the ghosts and fights against some villains, plus a bit of humor.
Overall to me this was a really fun series about teens fighting ghosts and supernatural occurrence. The setting of alternate London was brilliant to my opinion, as they had to use their wit, intelligence and diligence to solve mysteries or find information, since no handphone/internet was available. Obviously the great lead cast with their wonderful chemistry was a plus point. Even the critics seemed to like this too. So if you are interested in watching such supernatural series with young cast based on popular novels, then you would likely enjoy this as much as I did.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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