Dishing the dirt -all over again
What’s on, what’s best and where to see it
There’s a theory that there are only so many plots out there, and that all stories are variations on those. Even if you bear that in mind, it still appears to be rather soon to be considering a revamp of Gossip Girl, the glossy pop culture classic that ran from 2007 to 2012.
Nevertheless, that’s exactly what is happening. It seems its makers feel that in the nine years since the last series, a whole new generation of potential fans have appeared and are in desperate need of a fresh take on the drama. The original Gossip Girl was based on a series of novels by Cecily von Ziegesar and was narrated by a mysterious blogger, voiced by Kristen Bell. Each episode focused on the lives of wealthy adolescents living on Manhattan’s swanky Upper East
Wednesday
Side. The new version retains Bell as the narrator, but features an all-new set of characters. Showrunner Joshua Safran, who was a writer and executive producer on the original series, has described it as taking place in a shared universe with its predecessor. We’ve also been promised more adult content than before, which perhaps explains the show’s rather late time slot. With Serena now presumably married with a couple of kids, her position as the resident ‘It’ girl is taken by Jordan Alexander as Julien Calloway. She’s a fashion influencer who has recently been reunited with her younger halfsister Zoya (Whitney Peak).
The whole series is on iPlayer from Wednesday and all six seasons of the first incarnation are being made available so that fans old and new can contrast and compare.