Riverdale brings an overly-dramatic Archie to the small screen

After months of development, the television version of the Archie comic book series has premiered on the CW. Riverdale is a very contemporary and very CW spun version of the typical small American town we grew up with in comic pages. And it’s off to an interesting start.

Brought to screen by the already busy executive producer Greg Berlanti (we know him from Dawson’s Creek, Everwood, Political Animals and the entire television Arrow-verse), Riverdale appeared on my Netflix account last night and so I quickly downloaded the pilot episode to give it a try. I grew up with Archie comics, and well become they introduced their out character Kevin Keller, so I was curious to see how television would treat the characters who were PG innocent.

When the episode opened I began to wonder just how current they would be make Riverdale, and if gay Kevin Keller would grace the screen. I was rewarded within the first five minutes, when we’re actually introduced to Kevin, gay-best-friend of Betty and he brings the sass to Riverdale, except as a second-string recurring character how much we’ll see of him remains to be seen.

Putting Kevin aside, as I suspect will happen to the character, Riverdale is a teen drama & mystery very much in the style of many dark CW teen dramas. The writing has sharp, filled with wit and modern references (maybe too many). Veronica has been moved back to Riverdale by her mother to avoid a father/husband currently facing corruption charges. She’s caught Archie’s eye, made friends with Betty and made the cheerleading squad all in the first hour. The normally weedy Archie spent his summer working construction for his father which has made him muscular. He was got up to some naughtiness (which to spare you the spoiler, I won’t mention), leading to a secret that will be woven in the season’s main mystery, the disappearance of a random character I don’t recall from the comics.

One other main character didn’t appear until the very end. There’s a rift between Archie and his best friend Jughead, but Jughead was there from the start as he also plays the shows narrator. Most of the ‘teen’ actors on Riverdale are some child-actors I’m less familiar with, but the parents are recognizable including Archie’s dad played by Luke Perry.

Riverdale is not the town I grew up with. It is a CW town filled with big characters and several intertwined storylines; the kind involving murder, scandal and corruption. As none of the main characters are gay (and to be fair they never were), Riverdale is likely going to be similar to other CW dramas like The Vampire Diaries and The Originals; the gay characters are there in the background and pop in to provide a bit of sass and diversity. I think the comics may have tried to integrate Kevin into the Riverdale-verse, so we’ll see how that unfolds, but I suspect his motivation through the series will basically be to find a boyfriend. (Kevin didn’t make it into the main cast photo, while Jughead did).

One thing for sure is that Riverdale will be centered around Archie but this is no ‘Archie and friends’ comic book; it’s about the other characters too. So it’s a lot like other CW dramas where there will be plenty of events happening away from Archie, and some not even being about him.

We’re only one episode into the first season so it’s still early days and I won’t be over judgemental, but I do hope the series tones down the overly-dramatic tension that seems at ease with the quiet Riverdale I’m used to. Of course that might be just too boring.

I will say one nice part of Riverdale, like many of Greg’s other shows, it’s shot in British Columbia.