Could a New Nancy Drew Show Finally Mean Melanin?

Recently the internet has been buzzing with the sudden news that executive producers Joan Rater and Tony Phelan (Grey’s Anatomy) will be bringing literature’s favorite girl sleuth to life on CBS, and this time there’s a twist. No more the innocent, spunky youth we’ve come to love — this incarnation of Nancy Drew exists as a NYPD detective in her 30’s with modern technology to aid her abilities (although hopefully we’ve learned a thing or two from her awkward 2007 film when it comes to anachronisms). I’m not gonna lie, if you think adapting Wonder Woman for the screen has been tricky it only gets worse trying to refresh a character whose history extends even further. Yet there’s something timeless about Nancy’s tenacity and optimism that has allowed her popularity to endure for generations. I still remember having that library card on lock in elementary school and, while the series lasted, a thick stack of bright yellow Nancy Drew books to cart home weekly during the summers. Was it her fulfillment of Eurocentric beauty standards and conservative middle class upbringing that made her mystery-solving adventures so attractive? Of course not, and if the premise has already demonstrated a departure from the source material there’s absolutely no reason Nancy couldn’t be written for a person of color. After all, CBS already gave us an unheard of re-imagining of the Sherlock Holmes mythos with Lucy Liu as Dr. Watson in Elementary, and Fox’s Sleepy Hollow brought the melanin to the l…