Gossip Girl review: Reboot packs in enough meta moments and callbacks to please devotees

This sort-of sequel to the Noughties teen hit is most fun when it embraces its ridiculousness and stops trying to get its characters to make odd pronouncements about privilege
BBC/Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc

I’m not sure there is any earthly sound with the power to transport me so entirely and forcefully back to the year 2008 as Kristen Bell saying the words “Gossip Girl here,” a conspiratorial smirk weighing on every syllable.

Sometimes, a TV show arrives in your life at the perfect time; if you came of age in the tail end of the Noughties, too young to watch Sex and the City the first time around, then Gossip Girl was very likely that show. Based on the books by Cecily von Ziesegar and developed by the team behind its west coast equivalent The OC, it was one part aspirational, two parts absurd, chronicling, as Bell’s voiceover would put it, “the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite.”

That “elite” was a coterie of over-privileged teens with wardrobes curated by costume designer Eric Daman, who’d worked on SATC, and cartoonishly chaotic personal lives, centering on frenemies Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester) and Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively). Boyfriends were stolen and swapped. High society events were sabotaged. Teens banished other teens from the city (and those other teens… just went along with it). Parents would die dramatically, come back to life, or worse, get together with your boyfriend’s dad. One single episode featured three songs by Kings of Leon.

Presiding over it all was the anonymous blogger-slash-narrator, voiced by Bell, whose dirt-dishing website ensured that secrets rarely remained so. As it moved through six series, the storylines became increasingly convoluted, resulting in a final act unmasking of GG that didn’t entirely make sense; throw in some questionable plot points and an almost entirely wealthy, WASP-y cast of characters and the show feels very much like a product of its time.

Gossip Girl reboot
Meet the new cast of Gossip Girl
PA

Less than a decade on from that reveal, though, Gossip Girl has been given the reboot treatment, jumping from the US network formerly known as The CW to streaming service HBO Max (and from ITV2 to BBC One on this side of the Atlantic). Now a new, more diverse group of pupils from fancy private school Constance Billard (now merged with neighbouring boys’ school St Jude’s) has taken up residence on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum. Gossip Girl is no longer a blog but an anonymous Instagram account, and from the very beginning, we viewers learn who’s behind it; instead of name-checking Manhattan restaurant Butter and attending benefits at the Frick, this new crowd are more likely to be spotted partying at members’ clubs in Dumbo. How times have changed - some of us are old enough to remember when Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley)’s Brooklyn zip code marked him and sister Jenny (Taylor Momsen) out as social outcasts.

Top of the hierarchy is influencer Julien Calloway (Jordan Alexander), always flanked by her friends slash social media managers Luna (Zión Moreno) and Monet (Savannah Lee Smith). When her estranged half-sister Zoya (Whitney Peak) enrols at Constance, it signals the start of a psychodrama of Blair-Serena proportions - or at least, that’s what the show’s writers are hoping to set up.

The opening scenes of GG 2.0’s first episode make a self-conscious effort to acknowledge the original series’ foibles and flaws. When a group of Constance teachers led by Kate Keller (played by Rookie mag founder and former wunderkind fashion blogger Tavi Gevinson, a casting choice that will make OG GG fans feel like an exhumed fossil) digs out the original site, one of them suggests: “It’s like a lost Edith Wharton novel - and just as white.” Another allusion describes the admittedly quite toxic relationship between Blair and her on-off love interest Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick) as “definitely pre-cancel culture.”

Audrey, right, feels like Blair 2.0
BBC/Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc

Where the original series had BlackBerries, ornate headbands and a cameo from Alexa Chung, the reboot namechecks Deuxmoi (the Instagram account that’s basically an IRL Gossip Girl) and boasts an appearance from Jeremy O. Harris (there’s a whole set piece that takes place on the opening night of an imagined Harris play, a new version of Titus Andronicus, which has, in a deeply meta twist, since been commissioned by New York’s Public Theatre in real life).

For all these contemporary trappings, the characters often feel - for better and worse - like retreads of the old crowd. Audrey (Emily Alyn Lind) has Blair’s preppy dress sense and Type-A leanings; heavily medicated Max Wolfe (Thomas Doherty) is obviously a more sexually fluid Chuck; Julien’s boyfriend Obie (Eli Brown) has more than a touch of the sanctimonious Dan Humphreys about him (to the extent that he even sounds disconcertingly like Badgley) - which brings us to the show’s haphazard attempts to reckon with its characters’ privilege. Obie is a social justice warrior who just happens to be the son of one of Manhattan’s richest families, and is prone to making lofty pronouncements like “privilege ignores the reality of systemic issues,” which don’t really mean anything.

Zoya’s arrival sparks drama with her half-sister
BBC/Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

One scene in which he and Zoya go shopping for school supplies for state school students lands with a thud. Succession might have shown us that it’s possible to cleverly - and hilariously - interrogate the one percent, but Gossip Girl isn’t there yet; instead it has its characters wear their allegiances on tote bags.

The show is much more fun when it embraces its ridiculousness and dispenses with the superficial hand-wringing. Luckily there are enough glossy set pieces and knowing callbacks to old episodes, though, to make this a giddily (should that be guiltily?) enjoyable retread. The emergence of the child of one of the original show’s most infamous schemers as a mini tech mastermind is a treat, and however on-the-nose references to old storylines might be (remember “when a high school senior got a story published in the New Yorker,” one of the teachers asks), they’re plenty of fun for devotees - as are the meta moments when the new custodian of GG moans about “how hard” it is to craft posts in that inimitable “voice.” To borrow a phrase from Gossip Girl herself: I know I (still) love it. XOXO.

Gossip Girl episodes one to four are now on BBC iPlayer; the first episode is on BBC One, August 25 at 10.35pm. All series of the original show are available on BBC iPlayer

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in