Netflix’s The Baby-Sitters Club ran for two seasons and 18 episodes, and it never got the ending it deserved. The series, created by Rachel Shukert and based on Ann M. Martin’s children’s novels, first aired on July 3, 2020, and last aired on October 11, 2021. Netflix canceled it in March 2022.
That is a short run for a show this good. It is also, on the evidence of what actually made it to air, close to a complete one.
Trailer, via Netflix Family.
Five Friends in Stoneybrook, Connecticut
The premise is the premise of the books. Five middle-schoolers start a babysitting business in Stoneybrook, Connecticut, and the show follows the friendship and the adventures that come out of it. The business is the engine; the friendships are the point.
The cast does the work. Sophie Grace plays Kristy Thomas, the founder and the one with the plan. Momona Tamada plays Claudia Kishi. Shay Rudolph plays Stacey McGill. Malia Baker plays Mary Anne Spier.
- Kristy Thomas, played by Sophie Grace
- Claudia Kishi, played by Momona Tamada
- Stacey McGill, played by Shay Rudolph
- Mary Anne Spier, played by Malia Baker
That is four of the five. The fifth slot changed hands, and the change matters more than a casting note usually would.
Alicia Silverstone and Mark Feuerstein Join the Cast
Alicia Silverstone and Mark Feuerstein joined the cast in August 2019, ahead of the core group. The series was released on Netflix on July 3, 2020.
In March 2020, Sophie Grace, Malia Baker, Momona Tamada, Shay Rudolph and Xochitl Gomez joined the cast. That is the core group as it was first assembled.
Then, on March 18, 2021, it was reported that Kyndra Sanchez would join the cast as Dawn Schafer, replacing Gomez. The reason given was scheduling conflicts with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. This is the kind of thing that can unsettle a kids’ ensemble — a recast mid-run, a character swapped out between seasons, an audience asked to accept a new face in a role they already attached to someone else.
The show came through it with its tone intact. That much the record supports, and it is not a small thing.
Two Seasons, 18 Episodes, One Cancellation
In October 2020, the series was renewed for a second season. That second season was released on October 11, 2021. In March 2022, it was canceled.
Read that timeline again. Renewed in the fall of 2020. Second season lands in the fall of 2021. Canceled in the spring of 2022. The gap between the last episode and the cancellation is roughly five months. The show was not given a long leash, and it was not given a third season to grow into.
The genres listed for it are Kids and Drama, which undersells what it is doing. It is a comedy-drama, and the comedy is not decoration. The show is funny in the way middle school is funny — which is to say, often at someone’s expense, and usually survivable.
Faithful to Ann M. Martin, Built for Now
The series was praised for its faithfulness to its source material and for its appeal to modern audiences. Those two things are usually in tension. Fidelity to a decades-old children’s series tends to produce something preserved in amber; modernization tends to produce something that has the names and none of the feeling.
This show got both, and the reason is that it understood what was load-bearing in Ann M. Martin’s books. The babysitting business is not the point. The business is a device that puts five kids in rooms together with problems to solve and no adult to solve them. Keep that, and you can change everything else.
So the show is a contemporary take on the books. The middle-schoolers of Stoneybrook, Connecticut, are middle-schoolers of the 2020s, and the adaptation was praised for reaching them without losing what the novels were.
That is the whole trick, and it is harder than it looks. A lesser adaptation would have kept the plot beats and lost the register. This one kept the register.
What the Score Reflects
The Baby-Sitters Club holds a published critical score of 8.7 out of 10, with a Metacritic mark of 87 out of 100. That is a high number for a kids’ show, and it is the right number.
What earns it is not ambition. The show is not reaching for anything beyond what it is: a warm, well-built adaptation of a beloved book series, made with enough care that adults can watch it without checking the clock. The writing is sharp. The cast is good, and the four leads named above carry the ensemble without a weak link among them.
Two seasons and 18 episodes is a real body of television. But the show never got a third season, and the run ends where Netflix left it.
The recast of Dawn Schafer is the detail worth watching in hindsight. A show that can swap a cast member between seasons and come out the other side with its tone intact is a show with a steady production hand, and the faithfulness and the modernization did not fight each other.
The larger point is simpler. Netflix has canceled a lot of well-liked shows, and the pattern is familiar enough that another entry on the list does not register. This one should. The Baby-Sitters Club was doing something specific — adapting children’s literature without condescending to the children — and doing it at a level the genre rarely reaches. It got 18 episodes to prove it. That is the whole case.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.