Rachel Shukert’s adaptation treats children’s friendships with unusual care, helped by a young cast who seem comfortable together. Its reassuring manner sometimes limits the drama, but the warmth is earned and the humour travels across generations.
The Baby-Sitters Club is good family television because it pays attention to the children. Rachel Shukert’s adaptation of Ann M. Martin’s books takes friendship seriously, even when the immediate worry seems small from an adult’s distance. We recommend it, with one reservation: its eagerness to reassure can soften the drama. Across two seasons, though, the young ensemble gives the programme enough life to make that a complaint about something we like.
Sophie Grace’s Kristy Thomas, Momona Tamada’s Claudia Kishi, Shay Rudolph’s Stacey McGill and Malia Baker’s Mary Anne Spier have the difficult job of making a group feel close without making its members interchangeable. The performances give us reasons to care about each girl, and their ease together keeps the writing from sounding like a set of carefully allocated talking points. We warmed to them more quickly than we expected. It was the sense of mutual attention in the ensemble: each friendship seems to matter to the people inside it.
Updating a children’s book can become an exercise in congratulating adults on how much they have learnt since reading it. Rachel Shukert keeps the girls’ concerns central, including when the subject reaches beyond their own friendships. The writing gives everyday childhood worries space alongside wider social questions, without insisting that the audience rank them by importance. Its feminism begins with the simple assumption that these girls deserve our attention, even when an adult might consider their problems minor.
The humour also reaches across generations without making the young characters look foolish for caring about their own problems. Adults can enjoy the company without being asked to feel superior to it. We never felt that a second, more knowing programme was being performed over the children’s heads. Family television becomes hard work when it keeps stopping to reassure adults that they are the cleverest people watching, and this series has better uses for its attention.
The colourful production design makes the programme inviting before anyone has had to explain much. Cinematographers Adam Silver and Christopher Charles Kempinski keep the emphasis on the ensemble, while Janet Weinberg’s editing makes the group easy to follow. Jesse Novak’s music fits that light touch, although the combined effect can feel too determined to put us at ease. We like the lack of fuss; we would occasionally like something to disturb all this good company.
The limitation matters because reassurance can arrive before a worry has had much chance to trouble us. We sometimes wanted the series to sit longer with awkwardness, and to trust the cast to hold our attention without keeping the atmosphere so pleasant. Its sympathy for the girls is never in doubt, but sympathy alone cannot supply every dramatic beat. Viewers who need family stories to be abrasive will find the gentleness a real obstacle.
Try an episode before dismissing it as something to leave the children watching. With ten episodes in the first season and eight in the second, there is room to let the friendships develop without facing an endless commitment. It is worth watching together without turning every disagreement into a discussion about what everyone has learnt. Let the children have the first word afterwards.
