Ah, ‘90s edu-tainment sitcoms. Not since the ’50s had being a teenager seemed so damn cool. Between backwards hats, skateboards with two tails, grungy wardrobes, and the blossoming Internet, it was a hell of a time to be a teen actor. For the period, PBS’ Ghostwriter was easily the hippest show out there. (Suck on those apples, Alex Mack.) Don’t believe me? Try this Wiki description on for size:The series revolves around a close knit circle of friends from Brooklyn who solve neighborhood crimes and mysteries as a team of young detectives with the help of an invisible ghost. The ghost can communicate with the kids only by manipulating whatever text and letters he can find and using them to form words and sentences. The series was filmed on location in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.That’s blowing the current “hip Brooklyn sitcom” fetish out of the water by two whole decades. Those idiotic Bushmills ads that humblebrag about living in Brooklyn a whole three years ago? Go to hell, Ghostwriter just kicked your pithy ass.Rants aside, Ghostwriter also pulled in some big names, including Julia Stiles, who guest starred for all four parts of the episode “Who is Max Mouse?” which involved a hacker breaking into a school’s computer and wreaking havoc. Stiles, in possibly the coolest role of her career, drops some serious hacker knowledge.“Ever read Neuromancer? Never experienced the new wave? Next wave? Dreamwave? Or Cyberpunk?” she asks her classmates as their brains melt.“Can you jam with the console cowboys in cyberspace?” she follows, dropping easily the coolest line ever uttered on television. It’s the quintessential summation of the Zima era of tech, when the web was still this mysterious Wild West-slash-nightclub where you could do whatever you wanted as long as you knew someone who could get you in.Follow Derek Mead on Twitter: @derektmead.
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