Netflix released a trailer for its new TV series Get Even, based on the 2014 YA novel of the same name by Gretchen McNeil and its 2015 sequel, Get Dirty. The BBC/Netflix co-production’s first, 10-episode season will appear on the streaming service on July 31.
In the book, four prep-school students with very little in common—Bree, Kitty, Margot, and Olivia—team up to form a secret society called DGM (“Don’t Get Mad”) to expose and exact nonlethal revenge on bullies. Things get complicated, however, when one of their victims ends up dead, and DGM is implicated in his murder. A “school-sanctioned goon squad,” led by an athletic coach, sets out to find out the identities of DGM’s members.
Kirkus’ review compared the book to Sara Shepard’s 2006 YA bestseller, Pretty Little Liars, and the Get Even show trailer does bring to mind the very popular PLL TV series, which aired on ABC Family/Freeform for seven seasons before it ended in 2017.
The Get Even show, which premiered on the BBC iPlayer streaming service in February, shifts the location of the school from the United States to the United Kingdom, and the four leads may be unfamiliar to most American audiences. However, English actor Mia McKenna-Bruce, who plays Bree, appeared as Tee Taylor on Tracy Beaker Returns, a children’s BBC show based on the popular Tracy Beaker novels by Jacqueline Wilson.
A movie version of McNeil’s unrelated 2012 YA murder mystery, Ten, aired on Lifetime in 2017. Her next YA novel, #NoEscape—the third installment in her #MurderTrending series—is slated for publication in September.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
