YA is more popular than ever, but what does that term actually mean, other than being an acronym for “Young Adult?” About 55% of people who buy YA books are over the age of 18, and 28% of all YA books are purchased by people between the ages of 30 and 44. The line between YA and plain old A is just disappearing. The box office is dominated by PG and PG-13 movies about superheroes, CGI dinosaurs, and wizards, and animated movies about anthropomorphic toys and animals, while television is teeming with 1980s dragons, elves, and kids battling supernatural entities.
The starkest diagnosis of this phenomenon is that culture has been infantilized to a disturbing degree; however, a more optimistic reading might consider that people’s imagination and childlike wonder are no longer suppressed by growing up. In this happier mindset, the YA genre is really just the YAHA genre – Young at Heart Adults.
30 years ago it might have been safe to assume that Lockwood & co. would be a great series for teens and high school students as it is an imaginative, lively and thoughtful show about ghosts, talent, authority and friendship. Today the Netflix series about teenage ghost hunters can very well be adored by the over 40s. Who knows more? Careless, Lockwood & co. is an exciting series for young people, although it may be a bit crazy and predictable for older people. However, young at heart adults will probably still be thrilled.
Lockwood & Co. is about a spooky alternate reality
Lockwood & co. joins the many other YA series of recent years, but beats many of them (except the sadly canceled Paper girls). That’s because it has such an interesting yet surprisingly simple world structure, thanks to Jonathan Stroud’s books.
The series takes place in an alternate timeline where something known as ‘The Problem’ first occurred about five decades earlier. In this version of reality, ghosts begin to haunt the world at a fast, dangerous, and clearly visible pace, and there is no longer any debate about their existence. They’ve become a huge economic and political problem, but oddly enough, kids started developing psychic abilities to track them down and fight back.
This has resulted in what is essentially a booming business model based on child labour, with international conglomerates and smaller companies competing to recruit, train and employ young people to exorcise ghosts. Sadly, it’s a job with a high mortality rate, but The Problem has created a seismic upheaval in the global economy, and the employment provided by ghost hunting agencies brings in decent cash for the families of these kids.
Ruby Stokes’ Lucy leads Lockwood & Co.
Since The Problem disrupted the timeline decades ago, technology hasn’t progressed too much since the 1980s. There are no smartphones, hardly any PCs and few modern conveniences and inventions. The world of Lockwood & co., set mainly in London, resembles the perpetual gray days of Margaret Thatcher’s reign. Like some steampunk titles, the series feels very old and somehow set in the distant future at the same time. The world these characters inhabit feels almost timeless, which makes sense – when the afterlife is a proven phenomenon, time kind of loses its meaning.
Of course, the adults control the child ghost hunters, but the adults have no Talent, as it is called. Many children naturally develop this psychic ability to detect ghosts through one of three sensory talents: seeing, listening, and touching. Lucy is a listener; more than that, she is a child prodigy. Incredibly talented but vastly underappreciated, Lucy (Ruby Stokes) is blamed when a mission falls apart, resulting in the deaths of several colleagues. Of course the adults blamed her, and even her mother, a mean piece of work, doesn’t believe her. So one night Lucy Carlyle climbs out of her window in Northern England and goes to London.
The kids are fine
The major ghost hunting groups in London, such as the prestigious Fittes Agency, are the first of their kind. Without completing her fourth year of training, Lucy is rejected everywhere until she reaches the small agency of Lockwood & Company, consisting only of Anthony Lockwood (Cameron Chapman) and his friend George (Ali Hadji-Heshmati).
The lunatics run the asylum here – Lockwood is 18, lives in his late parents’ house and runs his own agency, the only one without adult supervision. They continue to work despite being looked down upon by other agencies and DEPRAC (Department of Psychical Research and Control), a subsidiary of Scotland Yard, interfering with them.
Lucy joins these two misfits, who are much more arrogant than they have any reason to be, and the three try to make a name for themselves. Unfortunately, they are just kids in the end, so mistakes get made, feelings hurt, buildings burnt down, jobs ruined, etc.
How old is Lockwood’s target audience?
Likewise, at the end of the same day, Lockwood & co. looks like it’s for kids. This is not a bad thing because there should be exciting, imaginative, anti-authoritarian shows like this for young people to enjoy, and if viewers are the kind of ‘young adults’ who watch Spongebob Squarepants and still talk about it Harry Potter or Transformers in their 30s and 40s, then they’ll probably enjoy it too.
Lockwood & co. seems to compromise the fun supernatural kids show Gravity falls and the classic sci-fi horror drama The X files; it’s the PG-13 of creepiness and excitement. Again, there’s nothing wrong with that at all, and it makes some of the series’ concerns, annoyances, and foibles make some sense.
For adults, Lucy is really the only likeable character here, while everyone else is unpleasant to varying degrees. However, kids will probably find George’s antisocial bitterness amusing and think Lockwood’s whims and smugness are super cool. Adults will likely recognize many of the key storylines and dialogue; for children, these can provide easier access to the world of the show and its characters.
Lockwood & Co. is an audiovisual treat
The centerpiece of this Venn diagram, which both kids and adults can probably agree on, is that Lockwood & co. looks and sounds fantastic. The series contrasts the dusty, monochromatic melancholy of an almost Dickensian London with the baroque, intricate appliances, houses and artifacts of a ghost-obsessed world. If HG Wells and Charles Dickens worked together, it might have produced something close Lockwood & co.
The major departments of makeup, costume, editing, and visual effects all work well together, and while the series has a number of different writers and directors, it all hangs together visually. This is mainly thanks to filmmaker Joe Cornish (Attack the block, The Adam and Joe Show), who ran much of the show; he wrote and directed the first episode, setting the tone for everything to come. Several of his projects have required children to fend off threats that the adults couldn’t remedy, and his themes fit with that Lockwood & co. like a glove.
Cornish has a great and eclectic taste in music, and the soundtrack and sound department here is fantastic. Relying on post-punk cuts for the first half of the show (Bauhaus, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, This Mortal Coil), the soundtrack evolves into some more emotionally resonant pop. The score seems like a constant deconstruction of the Bauhaus song Bela Lugosi is deadand the sound design uses its scratching and stretching sounds to create a truly supernatural aural palette.
It’s hard to say who something is for. Everything Everywhere Everything at once could win Best Picture, and a sequel to Top gun was the second highest-grossing film of 2022. Grown ups love Stranger things, a show about kids becoming teenagers fighting monsters. It’s a weird world and it’s hard to know who’s young and who’s mature. Maybe for a show like Lockwood & co.that looks and sounds great and has an exciting world-building, it just doesn’t matter.
Lockwood & co. is a Complete Fiction production and the eight hour episodes will be available for streaming on Netflix beginning January 27.