Lockwood & Co. Netflix Review: The Ghost Story That Grew Up on Screen
Promotional image for season one of Lockwood & Co. Used for review and commentary. Netflix’s Lockwood & Co. is the rare young-adult fantasy adaptation that feels older on screen than it does on the page. It keeps the haunted London, reckless young ghost-hunters, and sharp adventure plotting of Jonathan Stroud’s novels , but gives the premise more institutional weight. Ghosts are not simply things in the dark. They have become the basis of an economy, a bureaucracy, and a labour system that sends children out after sunset. The books are clever, atmospheric, and often very funny, with the elastic comic energy of a young-adult adventure. The television series lowers the volume without draining the life from them. Rooms are allowed to breathe; danger arrives through silence as often as spectacle; offices, uniforms, invoices, and regulations press against the supernatural. The adaptation does not so much age up the characters as age the world around them. That...