Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Home Before Dark’ On Apple TV+, Where A 9-Year-Old Investigative Journalist Finds Something Fishy In Her Father’s Hometown

Home Before Dark is based on the real-life reporting of Hilde Lysiak, who created her own newsletter and scooped local reporters on a murder in her father’s hometown when she was about nine (she’s now a mature 13, and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists). Lysiak and her parents are consulting producers of the series, which was created by executive producers Dana Fox and Dara Resnik (Jon M. Chu is the director). It’s always hard to make a show that’s “inspired” by a real person’s life, especially one that is as precocious as Lysiak. Does this show ground the fictional version of her in enough reality?

HOME BEFORE DARK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A girl in the back of her family’s Volvo, writing things down in a notepad, digital voice recorder at the ready. “I’m a reporter,” she says in voice over. “I know it seems weird, but I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember.”

The Gist: Hilde Lisko (Brooklynn Prince, who you might remember from The Florida Project) got her nose for news from her father Matthew (Jim Sturgess), as he’d bring little Hilde to crime scenes in his job as an investigative reporter for a New York tabloid. “My dad says finding the truth is what makes everything work right,” she says. She even started a newsletter called The Bed Stuy Beat. But when she’s 9, he loses his job at the tabloid and the family moves cross-country from Brooklyn to his hometown of Erie Harbor, Washington. There Matthew can live with his wife Bridget (Abby Miller) and their daughters Izzy (Kylie Rogers), Hilde and Ginny (Mila Morgan) can live for free in his childhood home while he figures out his next steps.

As soon as she gets into town, Hilde sees weirdness around, and her journalist ears prick up. Matthew tries to tell her that it’s a small town where nothing happens, and that she should just relax and live like a normal kid there, but she knows better. One of the first weird places she visits is the house of Penny Gillis (Sharon Taylor), who seems to be holding a garage sale with no customers. Hilde spies a machine she’s never seen before (a VCR) and other interesting items, but is surprised to learn that Penny knew her dad back in the day, and she actually had been saving something for whenever he came back: His childhood bike.

That night she notices police cars speeding down her street. She goes to Penny’s house and finds out that she died after an “unfortunate accident”. But despite what police chief Frank Briggs Sr. (Louis Herthum) and his son Frank Jr. (Michael Weston) tell her, she sees evidence that it was anything but, including unusual footprints. She goes home, redubs her newsletter The Magic Hour Chronicle (after the hour before dark, which is when Matthew wants her home from her exploits), and writes about the possibility that Penny was murdered.

The story runs through the school, making her a target of derision, including comments that say she should go back to having tea parties. Principal Kim Collins (Joelle Carter) tries to tell Bridget that her daughter is in trouble, but the former public defender knows her daughter didn’t break any rules and refuses to crush her dreams of being a reporter. Still, she and Matthew decide to hide the derisive comments from her post about the murder. When Hilde finds them, she’s sad that her father lied to her about them, even though they’re very harsh.

The next day, she goes to the police station to read the public file on the case. After being dismissed by the male cops, she gets help from officer Mackenzie “Trip” Johnson (Aziza Scott), and the two of them connect Penny to a kidnapping 30 years ago that her brother was accused of. Hilde also notices that in the crime scene photos the VCR was missing.

The day after that, she stands on a lunch table and reads the comments aloud to her school. Izzy stands with her in solidarity, as does two other kids in her class, Donny (Jibrail Nantambu) and Spoon (Deric McCabe). After Collins hauls Hilde into her office after the ensuing food fight, Hilde starts putting the evidence he saw at Penny’s house together, and manages to find the VCR tucked away in Collins’ locked office closet. When she brings it home, Hilde and Izzy notice there’s a tape from 1988 in it. There, the kidnapping is scene, and one of the people riding bikes that night may just be their father.

Our Take: Home Before Dark is definitely aimed towards the preteen and teen crowd, and people who are hungering for teen drama that’s dark but not Riverdale dark. Hilde is definitely the focus of the show, at least judging by the first episode, with the rest of the cast being there to service her journalistic hunches. While that’s not a great thing — the only character that seems to have any kind of depth is her mother, mostly through the scene where she’s defending Hilde to Principal Collins — in the case of this show, it’s not a dealbreaker.

Why? Because the idea is that this is going to be about how Hilde cracks the case, and how the people who support the young journalist help her. It’s easy to make what Hilde is doing cutsey or make her wiser beyond her years than she needs to be. But it seems that the writers and Prince strike the right tone. Sure, Hilde is super-smart for her age, and she’s got an unusual attraction to crime and murder for someone so young. But that curiosity is approached in an honest and organic manner. It doesn’t feel weird at all that this kid is sticking her nose in very adult business, and that’s because her bona fides were well-established by the opening montage.

As Hilde begins to uncover the truth, with the help of her crew (Izzy, Donny and Spoon), the adults may fade into the background a bit, even though we’re pretty sure Matthew knows more about that abduction than he lets on. What we hope is that Hilde’s parents and her friends become more rounded characters as time goes on so that when they help Hilde out, the motivations for doing so feel as natural as possible.

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Parting Shot: Matthew looks at a highway overpass, and flashes back to the image of what it looked like when he was there 32 years ago. Hilde rides her bike down a lakeside road with a determined look on her face, and her image flashes back and forth with an image of an equally-determined boy on his bike. Could it be her father when he was a kid?

Sleeper Star: Kylie Rogers starts to forge her own image as Hilde’s older sister Izzy near the end of the first episode; she’s someone who is equally embarrassed by her sister’s exploits but willing to help her as well as defend her, even if it doesn’t make her look cool. We really liked that her character isn’t the typical scoffing teenager and big sister.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Dammit, Hilde! Why can’t you be a little kid for once in your life?” Matthew yells at his daughter when she tells him that he would have never let a story like that go. It’s a bit over the top, but her reaction to it was one of shock and dismay. She hugs him and says, “That’s OK, Dad, I know you didn’t mean it.” Despite the cliched outburst, Prince’s reaction to it was top notch.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Home Before Dark is a solid show that features a character inspired by a real-life kid investigative reporter. It’s one of those shows that you could probably watch in 3-4 good chunks (it’s 10 episodes), and it’s not a heavy mental lift. In other words, it’s a fine show to binge while you’re sheltering in place.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Home Before Dark On Apple TV+