Locke & Key

Luckily, the solid performances, like the crackerjack conceit, keep things from falling totally flat. Jones and Jessup are particularly excellent, both alone and together. ... Edge is exactly what this series lacks, and not in a scandalous way.

As is, it’s a perfectly fun, flighty dark fantasy that hasn’t quite unlocked its full potential.

It knows it’s walking familiar ground — spooky but never scary, occasionally violent but never gory, magical but hardly wondrous. Watchable but nowhere near fascinating.

Locke & Key may mete out its genre goofiness over the course of a slump-filled first season, but if you want more than morsels to sustain you, there are plenty of similarly-toned shows without the barrier to entry.

Despite Locke & Key’s heavy thematic dimensions, its potential for exploring the interlocking themes of memory and grief is undercut by a host of issues: its pedestrian score, which doesn’t trust the audience one iota to make obvious connections; its light-handed approach to the story’s horror elements; its tone, which renders the show a young-adult-skewed adaptation of the source material; and a lack of imagination in its approach to memory as a plot dynamic.

Simply put, there are too many TV shows about magical/special/mutant teens to get away with something that comes across as being this generic.

Netflix’s “Locke and Key” works, but it also feels like the inevitable product of the streaming network’s own algorithm. It feels so calibrated to what’s already worked for Netflix that it ultimately feels more safe than anything else.

The series is a near-ish approximation of a lot of other things — including several Netflix shows in the middle of long hiatuses — without ever quite seeming inspired or essential in its own right.

Eevery time Locke & Key hits a peak — episodes three and four and seven through nine are the highlights — it's followed by a valley. ... Overall, Locke & Key struggles to establish the stakes for the series — I still can't tell you what would happen if Evil Well Girl (Laysla De Oliveira) achieved her evil goals — and struggles more to decide who it's intended for.

Perhaps the adaptation's troubled development history explains why this incarnation of the series seems determined to play it as safe as possible -- as safe as a show that features multiple scenes of characters using keys to unlock the contents of their heads can be anyway.

Sadly, “Locke & Key” is similar to the creepy old Key House, an old, outdated mansion filled with potentially fun mysteries and intrigue but lacking the strong bones and foundation that can sustain the structure for years to come.