Plan B Forum

Beloved detective Nancy Drew is returning to TV - but she'll look different from how fans remember. American network CBS is pledging that the new Nancy Drew won't be white.

At the Television Critics Association press previews last week, the head of the CBS entertainment division, Glenn Geller, told reporters his network wanted to focus on diversity, including shows designed around characters who were black and Latino.

"We're not casting colour-blind, we're casting colour-conscious," he said.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter after his session, Geller gave one specific way how the network plans to actually cast colour-conscious - Nancy Drew won't be white.

Geller said while the actress who will play the much-loved detective in the network's television reboot hasn't been decided, "she is diverse, that is the way she is written" and specifically said this Nancy - a woman in her 30s in the network's new show - won't be "Caucasian".

As part of a broader push in the US for more diverse stories, TV and film creators have turned to familiar stories or franchises with modern upgrades. But returning to old favourites, regardless of character changes, can be a high-risk, high-reward strategy.

"A big problem for reboots is when they stray too far from what made the first incarnation of a show successful," Maureen Ryan, a TV critic for Variety says, calling it a "tricky balance" because viewers don't want to watch a carbon copy and "most concepts need to be updated or revised for the current era"

"The era of most protagonists... being middle-class, heterosexual white people is or should be a thing of the past," Ryan says.

"That's not our world, and reboots can catch up to the present by acknowledging that fact."

Nancy Drew wouldn't be the first time a character originally conceived or cast as white or male, would be changed for a reboot.

CBS's own Sherlock Holmes story, Elementary, cast Lucy Liu in the Watson role. Hawaii Five-0 switched one of their supporting characters from male to female - but the leads remained white males.

The most recent version of the film Annie cast black actors in some of the main roles, including Quvenzhane Wallis as the title character. The dramatically restructured Battlestar Galactica over a decade ago made one of the main characters a woman. The forthcoming Ghostbusters reboot switches both the genders of the main team and their receptionist. Michael B Jordan, a black actor, was cast as the new Johnny Storm in the Fantastic Four reboot.

Shilpa Dave, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia, says TV networks which rely on advertising have to think about a changing audience that is more multiracial, and reboots offer an attractive way to gain crossover audiences.

"Something like Nancy Drew, a staple and a brand, is going to be a thing you can really promote - not only to people who've read it... but to new audiences, especially if she's going to be a woman of colour," Dave says. "You can get a majority white audience if you want - but other people are going to be at least intrigued because of the casting."

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35317531