As anyone who has ever had the common nightmare of a last-minute exam they didn't study for knows, being stuck in high school forever would be awful.
But that's exactly what seems to be happening to Maddie Nears (Peyton List), who, after being murdered on the grounds of her school, falls in with a group of ghosts who haunt the facility. Hailing from different eras, the spirits whose number Maddie joins have little in common except a jaded sense of resignation to their fate; they guide Maddie through the first days of her afterlife, in which she can see what's going on around her but, at least at first, can't make herself known to the friends she left behind on Earth.
Creators: Megan Trinrud, Nate Trinrud
Stars: Peyton List, Kristian Ventura, Spencer Macpherson
Comparisons are readily announced: CBS’s “Ghosts,” for example, or Alice Sebold’s novel “The Lovely Bones,” adapted for film by Peter Jackson, which also told the story of a high school girl who sees life go on after her murder. But “School Spirits” is more upbeat and cheerful than the latter, less melancholy. What happened to Maddie is obviously sadder, but her story is told with an irony and charm that should appeal to teenage fans.
In the sequences where Maddie is learning the basic rules of ghostliness (she can’t leave the school building, for example), I was reminded of the cheerful, sharp opening sequences of the big crowd-pleaser “Ghost,” before “Unchained Melody” starts playing and the tears start flowing.
Created by sibling duo Nate Trinrud and Megan Trinrud, “School Spirits” has at its center a rather engaging mystery: who killed Maddie? But its heart seems to lie in the reality its first few episodes create: Frankly, there’s far more interest in watching the mores and habits of teenage ghosts from different decades vibrate together than in unraveling the mystery.
For Maddie, death has taken a lot from her, but it’s also presented her with the opportunity to enter a new social circle, and List rises to the challenge of showing us Maddie’s acerbic wit and ability to find the joke in serious circumstances. Without losing sight of the pain of Maddie’s story, “School Spirits” manages to be surprisingly sparkling and funny, ample proof that there are new stories to tell about the institution no one would want to be trapped in for their entire afterlife.
“School Spirits” premieres its first three episodes Thursday, March 9 on Paramount.
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