“When your best friend is murdered before your 17th birthday, you don’t develop a keen sense of mercy…”
So muses Kristen Bell’s Veronica Mars as she heads back to tv. The original critically-acclaimed ‘teen-noir’ television series depicted Bell as Veronica, a young girl who was just about to finish High School when her best friend is murdered and no-one seems able to find out who is responsible and why. Veronica, every good at investigating as her father Sheriff Keith Mars (Enrico Colantoni), is determined to find answers, but her forthright attitude and snark – a combination of her upbringing and her rebuilding of her life after being raped by an unknown assailant the year before, means she doesn’t always take the easy road to her goals. Even when the truth about the murder surfaces, key mysteries continued and led to Veronica and her father setting up a detective agency in the following seasons.
After three outings between 2004-2007, the series was cancelled. A teaser-reel was created for a potential fourth run that dealt with Veronica moving away from Neptune’s sandy beaches and formally joining the FBI – though that didn’t go forward.
Since then the character of Veronica Mars has continued to resonate, recently appearing in two novels and a web-series based around a supporting character Dick Casabalanca. There was a 2014 kickstarter-funded movie that reunited key members of the cast (with Veronica coming back to Neptune when her old flame and bad-boy Logan Echolls – played by Jason Dohring – is accused of murder) and which audiences and critics received well (though there was some controversy over the ethical practicalities of a for-profit significant-scale tv movie being crowd-sourced) and late last year the rumours of a revival surfaced.
The hulu platform will begin that eight-episode revival, penned by creator Rob Thomas, on 26th July with Veronica still living and working in Neptune, alongside her private-detective father and faced with major drama involving corruption, murder – as you can see from the new teaser- some significant fireworks – which seems to point to someone deliberately targeting the area’s popular and profitable Spring Break. Many of the main cast are returning in some capacity and there are ‘new’ faces such as Patton Oswalt and J.K. Simmons…
Here’s a peek, marshmallows…
