Children’s show / TV
2019-2020 / 15 minutes x 40 episodes
RATING: 9/10

Ava, Maudie, Ezra, and Kyle are four fifth graders with a knack for solving crimes. Or, rather, the brilliant and hyper observant Maud, has a real knack for solving crimes… and she couldn’t do it without help. Maudie is smart, but her weakness is social awareness – she’ll sometimes blurt out something that is certainly true, but might not be appropriate or polite. The other girl on the team, Ava, is the more emotionally-aware one, and the most compassionate and bubbly, always raising money for this charitable project or that.

The two boys could be summed up as geek and dumb jock, and while that’s a bit simplistic, it isn’t far off. Ezra is very smart, particularly with computers, but smart like you or me can be – he’s still not the Sherlock Holmes-kind of smart that Maudie is. His best friend is the energetic, athletic, and easily distracted, Kyle who likes every sport and is the best at all of them. He’s the biggest comedic factor, but he’s not simply dumb. He’s probably the most age-accurate of the bunch – he doesn’t get things that the watching kids wouldn’t get either, so when he asks questions to clear away his confusion, that helps the elementary-aged viewers too.

After coming together to solve a mystery in the first episode, the four friends decide to start a detective agency to help solve cases around their school and neighborhood. They call themselves The InBESTigagors, and after each crime is solved they record their thoughts on a vlog which turns into the episode we watch. It’s a little bit like a faux reality-show, though we get to see much more than what their video camera records.

There’s loads of humor here, and all of it the good clean goofy sort.

Cautions

Language concerns in  the six episodes I watched were limited to one instance of “oh my goodness.”

To clarify, I didn’t watch the whole series. I just sat down to watch the first half dozen, five of which were easy to recommend without reservation. While they are tackling  “crimes” they are of a pretty kid-appropriate sort – someone claims someone else’s homework as their own, for example. The one episode I had issue with was the fifth, called “The Case of the Sleepover Secret,” which had a classmate’s parental divorce as a subtext. Divorce is common, so I understand why the writers might have thought it no big deal to have as an element in the story. But as divorce is also one of the most worrisome things that could happen to a child, it’s not something I want to introduce as concern for my own kids.

But, quizzing my family on the other 34 episodes, they can’t recall any other material that, like this, is too heavy for this otherwise lightweight carefree show.

I’ll also take issue with how some of the “criminals” do their wrong-doing for reasons that are made a bit too understandable. The InBESTigators don’t quite go as far as excusing the crime, but they can veer in that direction, so parents may need to emphasize that wrong is still wrong, even when someone else has been mean first.

Conclusion

The InBESTigators is the kind of show that could get big laughs from kids 8 to 12, and smiles from everyone else – mom and dad really won’t mind checking out an episode or three. My kids have watched them on repeat, seeing each episode probably three or four times.

Part of the appeal for me is that each episode is just 15 minutes long, which makes this easy to watch for just a short time – you don’t have to commit to the 90 minutes a movie would take.

It seems to move around on the various streaming services, but as of writing is available on Netflix and BYUtv.org. Check out the trailer below.