A fresh take on ‘Baby-Sitters Club’
The new show is a thoughtfully conceived Gen-Z upgrade
If you were attempting to tell a story in these dreary days about the rewards of believing in the best of people, you could do no better than the smart, affirmative joy that’s found in Netflix’s fresh take on The Baby-Sitters Club, a 10-episode drama aimed squarely at the tweenage-girl set, but willing to share its goodwill with anyone who needs a lift. I’m about as far from the show’s intended demographic as a person can get, but The Baby-Sitters Club is yet another reminder of the lucky life of a critic, who gets to watch everything and discover the unexpected trove of kindness and spirit seen here.
The women in my life — especially those friends who grew up in the 1980s and 90s reading the 200-plus novels in the original book series conceived by Ann M Martin — are way, way ahead of me on this: The Baby-Sitters Club, which has sold more than 180 million paperbacks and was previously adapted into a short-lived TV series and a 1995 movie, was never only about babysitting.
It’s an entire ethic, impressively built on the tenet that we are each of us becoming a better and more responsible person every day. How the books and now this series are able to do this without seeming saccharine, preachy or otherwise Disneyfied is part of why The Baby-Sitters Club is such a watchable treat. Not only do things generally work out for these girls, it works out because they work at it.
Within its opening minutes, one cannot help but groove on the show’s welcoming nature, as a seventh-grader named Kristy Thomas (Sophie Grace) sees how desperate her single mom (Alicia Silverstone) is to find a last-minute sitter for her little brother.
Kristy hatches a plan to start a fullservice babysitting partnership in idyllic Stoneybrook, Connecticut. She recruits her best friend Mary Anne Spier (Malia Baker), their budding-artist friend, Claudia Kishi (Momona Tanada), and the new girl at school, Stacey McGill (Shay Rudolph).
Later they are joined by another new girl, Dawn Schafer (Xochitl Gomez).
The characters all hew to the archetypes Martin originally set forth, in that Kristy is bossy and sometimes impetuous. Mary Ann is shy but wise. Claudia’s creativity is at odds with her parents’ expectations. And Stacey just wants a fresh start after a disastrous viral video incident at her old school in Manhattan.
Showrunner Rachel Shukert (whose TV work includes ‘GLOW’) and executive producer Lucia Aniello (‘Broad City’) clearly want nothing more than to do right by the books they loved as girls, while carefully steering ‘Baby-Sitters Club’ toward a thoughtfully conceived Gen-Z upgrade.
That naturally means a stronger emphasis on the club’s diversity — as well as that of their Stoneybrook universe — not just in terms of colour or ethnicity, but a broader sense of community and dignity.
These babysitters, as well as the tykes they care for, are a new breed.
And although they’re as wired and Instagram-dependent as their peers, these girls honour their predecessors by choosing an analogue approach to business, circulating paper flyers in the neighbourhood and directing all calls from clients to a landline phone in Claudia’s bedroom.
Shukert’s desire to both preserve and update the franchise’s original appeal pays off with an appropriate zing or two in the dialogue.
At camp, there’s a full-on revolt over socioeconomics, as Dawn and Claudia discover that the poorer kids aren’t allowed to participate in art lessons, which cost extra. As they barricade their cabins and demand equality, some viewers might bristle at the notion that The Baby-Sitters Club has gone political. To those fussy few, I’d offer this challenge: Just try to find a show that better promotes that most sacred of conservative American values — free enterprise.