After a fishing boat is raided and a lockbox containing a radioactive Egyptian idol is stolen, a mysterious man kills the captain and almost the entire crew of the boat - only one man escapes alive.
Some time later, while on the way to her eldest son's baseball game, Laura Hardy notices she is being followed. After the game, the two Hardy boys and their father are informed that Laura has been killed in a car accident.
Papa Hardy apparently decides to add insult to injury when he informs his sons that they will be moving to the small town of Bridgeport for the summer. Elder son Frank is upset to be pulled away from his team, his friends and his girlfriend. Younger son Joe lacks the same social connections, but clearly expects the kids there to be even more dull and hostile than those at his current school.
But as will soon become clear, Bridgeport is a far more important and complicated place than it appears. And if their father thought moving there would keep his sons out of whatever danger claimed their mother ... well, it's safe to say he's taken them out of the frying pan and into the fire.
This is the sixth TV adaptation of the Hardy Boys book series, which originally launched in 1927. It updates the timeframe to the 1980s, perhaps to cash in on the same nostalgia factor that Stranger Things used to such success; or perhaps as a canny writing tactic. In that era, kids were allowed much greater freedom to roam around unsupervised, and narrative complications such as cell phones and internet searches are off the table. The setting is nicely realised. Certainly, as someone who lived through the 1980s, I definitely recognised many of the fashions and technological devices on show!
Rather more unusually, this version of The Hardy Boys also introduces a strong supernatural element. Objects can and do have mystical powers. And it's here that things go wrong. While I'm not opposed to the idea in principle, the execution of this element falls flat, not least because it directly contributes to several elements of the main mystery becoming frankly rather nonsensical. Which has you might imagine, is a real problem for a mystery show.
It's by no means the only flaw in this area, but I have to call out in particular that the instigating event for the whole series - Laura Hardy's planned exposé of the secret conspiracy that controls these magical artefacts, and the lethal steps taken to silence her - make no sense at all. The show provides no indication that Mrs Hardy had any actual evidence of genuine supernatural powers being at work, and without such evidence, her whole article would either amount to "in this small town, it is the richest people who run things" (which as news stories go ... isn't one), or would be laughed out of any serious news room as pure fairy tales.
It's a shame that the main plot doesn't really deliver, because the show does have some good elements. For instance, I did like the subtle hints at something more than friendship between the boys' aunt another character's mother. The 'under the radar', very tentative nature of this relationship is I think a good reflection of the times in which the show is set, and how careful non-straight people had to be. I'm glad that public attitudes toward same-sex couples are better now, and they no longer have to hide themselves as much as they once did, but if you set your show in the 1980s and have characters interested in a same-sex relationship, there is value in being truthful about the social issues they faced. So thumbs up for the work done in that space.
I also feel I should call out the strong work done by the young cast. They all deliver good performances, and I think deserved better material to
work with. Alas though, even they can't paper over the weaknesses in
the main plot.
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