TL;DR – This was a fascinating series with an exciting premise yet to show its full hand, but I want to see where it goes.

Disclosure – I paid for the Netflix service that viewed this series.

Lockwood & Co. Review –

There are some shows that you check out just because there is an idea that is so interesting that you need to check it out. What happens if ghosts are real and they just start attacking people? How would that change a modern society where death is all around? It is a question that I very much wanted to find out.

So to set the scene, it has been 50 years since the problem changed the world. One day people just started to drop dead in mysterious ways at night. Soon the world discovers that ghosts or visitors have come back, and if they touch you, well, you’re dead. It was a chaotic time as the world tried to find out how to fight back until they discovered the power of Iron, Salt, and Silver and that some children and teenagers could see the visitors fight them. In 2020, one of those teenagers is Lucy Carlyle (Ruby Stokes), but after being hung out to dry by her former boss, she makes the trip to London to join one of the giant ghost agencies. But without her parent’s permission, no one will take her, well that is until she stumbles into the office of Lockwood & Co., run by Anthony Lockwood (Cameron Chapman) and supported by George Karim (Ali Hadji-Heshmati). They are the only agency that is run by the teens who are doing the dying, so they know what the stakes are. Now from here, we will be looking at the season as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead for the show.   

What I liked the most about this series is how they built the world, full of familiar and quite odd things. I think if you have dabbled in the supernatural genre or watched shows like Supernatural, then the notions of iron, silver, and salt won’t be too foreign for you. All these touches around the place help bring the world to life or to death as you would have it. Even though there is a curfew at night, there are spots of safety built around the place. UV lights in the street, with their specific shape, silver added to cab windows, and meetings over running water.

It is a world where the young have to sacrifice themselves for the rest of society. But when has security not been a significant industry, because when people are scared, they will pay. When the rich need their old manor houses cleared of visitors so they can sell them, well, there is a lot of money at hand. You see these tendrils spread through society through both legitimate and illegitimate. This creates a world you want to jump into because the groundwork for exciting stories is there for you.

The question is, does the first season actually make the most of the world they are playing in, and I would say that the answer is yes. What happens to a starlet on her way to Hollywood before mysteriously disappearing, becoming a visitor and taking out the people in the house she was murdered in? Could you set up someone’s murder by tricking them into going into a haunted house and having the visitors take care of your problem? This is even before you start scratching the surface of what, if anything, caused the problem in the first place.

This first season covers the first two books, The Screaming Staircase and The Whispering Skull, and I think it had an excellent space to cover all the details in the books without too much padding. There are threads from both stories integrated throughout the series, so it does not feel like two separate halves, even if there is a clear distinction. Of the two stories, I was pleasantly surprised with the first one because I didn’t see the outcome coming, while I think the second story revealed its hand a little too much. Our three leads all work fantastically in their roles, and now that we have grounded where their place is in the company, I look forward to seeing some more growth next season.

In the end, do we recommend Lockwood & Co. Season 1? Yes, we would. I think it knew what it wanted to do and played to those strengths. The cast was good, and there is just enough of a greater mystery on show here to draw you through the series on top of the individual stories.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you seen Lockwood & Co. yet ?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day.    

Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Lockwood & Co.
Directed by – Joe Cornish, William McGregor & Catherine Morshead
Written by – Joe Cornish, Joy Wilkinson, Kara Smith & Ed Hime
Created by – Joe Cornish
Based On – Lockwood & Co. by Jonathan Stroud
Production/Distribution Companies – Complete Fiction & Netflix
Starring – Ruby Stokes, Cameron Chapman & Ali Hadji-Heshmati with Michael Clarke, Ivanno Jeremiah, Luke Treadaway, Morven Christie, Jack Bandeira, Ben Crompton, Hayley Konadu, Rhianna Dorris, Paddy Holland, Rico Vina, Louise Brealey & Nigel Planer
Episodes Covered – This Will Be Us, Let Go of Me, Doubt Thou the Stars, Sweet Dreams, Death Is Coming, You Never Asked, Mesmerised & Not the Eternal