Review of Home Before Dark

So the problem at the core of Home Before Dark is that what appears at first to have a new twist to it, i.e. A true story about a 9-year old child reporter whose sleuthing makes a difference - proves to comprise of the same-old over-used format we audiences are surely all growing weary of in this era of streaming-on-demand, which is, to make the assumption that we will become invested in the characters to the extent that it barely matters what the plot-line is, as they are sent off over endless series of diversions of doing this 'n that, replete with mini-dramas, Deep Conversations, and mini-revelations, all of which add up - over the course of 20+ episodes - to the resolution of a mystery - which is what we tuned into for the resolution of in the first place. At the risk of raising the ire of umpteen Millennials, who appear to feed off this sort of Silver Linings Playbook stuff, Agatha Christie never made this mistake with her mysteries; all her plot diversions were about red herrings, which one followed willingly because one could always trust that ultimately, all the loose ends would tie up and the mystery would be resolved within a reasonable attention span. Yes, I loved the first season of Stranger Things, but once the basic mystery was resolved, the storyline couldn't be sustained and I found myself reaching backwards in time to re-watch the original inspiration, E. T. Unfortunately, many of the characters in Home Before Dark are simply uninspired, with our intrepid primary reporter never reined in by her doting parents, who permit her to run around a town harboring a dark secret (an abducted child, no less!) and some dangerous authority figures, her two 9-year old friends in tow - whose parents are apparently oblivious to the danger by association - as she pleases, in pursuit of The Truth.