‘Baby-Sitters Club’ is a delightful update of a classic series: Review

Before I knew if I was a Carrie or a Miranda, before I knew what my favorite Avenger or Disney Princess said about me, I knew I was a Mary Anne.

She was the shy, sheltered one in Ann M. Martin’s Baby-Sitters Club books, and thus my way into the world they promised: cozy and comfortable, with just enough adventure to spark a preteen’s imagination, but not so much that her ability to return safely home at the end of the day was ever in doubt. Like me, Mary Anne was rarely the one who made things happen, but so often the one who came through when they did. If she could live in Stoneybrook, so could I.

I treasured my time with her and her friends, devouring every single one of their stories throughout the first half of the ’90s. Until I didn’t anymore. By high school, I’d grown up and left Mary Anne’s picturesque New England suburb beyond for more exotic locales, like Sweet Valley and Fear Street. When I did think back to Stoneybrook, it was as old-fashioned baby stuff I’d outgrown.

So it was with curiosity and some skepticism that I approached my return to Stoneybrook in the form of Netflix’s The Baby-Sitters Club. I anticipated a nostalgic thrill and not much else — surely the stories I was too old for 20-odd years ago, I’d be too old for now. What I didn’t expect was to fall back in love with a world that had evolved in my time away, but remained unchanged in the ways that mattered most.

The adaptation, spearheaded by Rachel Shukert, stays surprisingly true to the source material, even as it moves the action to the present day. As in the books, things start with a 12-year-old’s great idea to form a babysitting business with a few of her friends, and as in the books, each installment of the story is told from a different girl’s perspective. Entire storylines are lifted straight from the novels — Kristy’s mom getting married, Stacey trying to hide her big secret — and I was surprised to discover how well I still remembered them all this time later.

But the Baby-Sitters Club show shrewdly updates the cultural landscape in which these narratives are taking place. The community is more racially diverse in this iteration: Japanese American Claudia (Momona Tamada), once the sole non-white founding member, is joined by Mary Anne (Malia Baker), who has been reimagined as biracial, and later Dawn (Xochitl Gomez), who is now Latina. There are subplots about a trans kid, a practicing witch (“more of a spiritual healer,” Dawn clarifies), and the lingering trauma of Japanese internment. The entire 10-episode first season culminates in a small but mighty protest, echoing the streets outside our doors.

The modernizing of the TV series feels not like a concession to changing times, but like a natural outgrowth of the concept’s fundamental appeal.

Granted, we aren’t exactly talking gritty realism here. These preteens are still protected by the conventions of family-friendly television and their own well-meaning, relatively well-off parents. But even those grown-ups are allowed to be funny and flawed, for our amusement if not that of their daughters. We get to feel for Kristy’s mom (Alicia Silverstone) and future stepdad (Mark Feuerstein) trying desperately and mostly failing to win her over, or giggle at the utter perfection of Marc Evan Jackson playing Mary Anne’s famously uptight father. Their foibles go a long way toward making Stoneybrook feel like a believable place, and not just a playground for the kids.

Then again, maybe that’s just my adult self talking. I don’t know if the parents were never this interesting in the books, or if, as an elementary school reader, I just didn’t care about their troubles. I do know that the key to The Baby-Sitters Club, now and then, is that it meets the girls at their own level without condescension or excessive sentimentality. 

They’re given arcs that fit them just right. Mary Anne getting to redecorate her room or take charge of the summer camp musical aren’t earth-shattering developments, but they’re reflections of her growing confidence over the course of the season, and Baker’s thoughtful performance keeps us with her for every step of that journey. Any fears that these characters will be reduced to kids’-show cutesiness dissipate within an episode or two — or even earlier in the case of Tamada’s Claudia, who makes a strong impression right out of the gate as an artsy eccentric with the wardrobe to match.

This time around, though, the heroine who felt closest to my heart was Kristy (Sophie Grace). The self-appointed president of the BSC is probably the most difficult character to love, a know-it-all with a jealous streak and big “I want to speak to the manager” energy. (Indeed, she spends one entire storyline doing just that.) Which makes it all the more touching that she’s extended the same compassion and generosity as her more “likable” peers. She might lash out at her mom or throw a tantrum in front of Dawn, but the show lets her screw up and learn better and try again, because that’s what being a 12-year-old is.

And The Baby-Sitters Club takes seriously the business of being a 12-year-old. To the characters, the club may be about entrepreneurship and childcare, but to viewers, its true purpose is to serve as a space where these girls get to just be girls, figuring out their place in the world in their own time and on their own terms. In that light, the modernizing of the TV series feels not like a concession to changing times, but like a natural outgrowth of the concept’s fundamental appeal.

Once upon a time, Mary Anne and her friends helped me make sense of my universe, to understand how it could work or should work and the role I had to play in it. I don’t mean to overstate the significance of these books — they were hardly accurate reflections of reality, their predictable plots only stretched the imagination so far, and I read lots of other books as well. But they came along at the right time to help me work out my self-identity through the characters, who over dozens of novels came to feel as familiar to me as real people.

The Baby-Sitters Club series extends that gift to a new generation, showing them an idealized version of the world they’ll someday inherit. Stoneybrook hasn’t changed completely: The streets are still lined with pretty trees, the locals are still friendly and welcoming. On the other hand, the storefronts have changed. New neighbors have moved in. Different conversations are being had. As delightful as it was to walk down memory lane, and as eager as I am to do it again and again, I left with the realization that this Stoneybrook isn’t really for me anymore. It’s for today’s Mary Annes (and Claudias and Staceys and Dawns and Kristys). I hope they enjoy it as much as I did.

The Baby-Sitters Club is available to stream on Netflix starting July 3.