Netflix’s new version of The Baby-Sitters Club is a total triumph. It’s sweet, funny, hopeful, but most of all, encouraging. The message to girls, young and old, is that we are stronger together. The Baby-Sitters Club might be a pitch perfect show for kids and tweens, but it’s sure to become a feel-good obsession for grown women and men alike. It’s that good.

It’s honestly rare to watch a show and not just feel fully confident about being able to recommend it to anyone, regardless of gender or age, but say that it should be watched by everyone. Young women deserve to be taken seriously. And so does this show.

"Baby-Sitters" is a near-perfect distillation of what made the book series sell millions of copies. The series is optimistic but not deluded, youthful but not juvenile and sweet but not mawkish. Its quintet of young actresses (the original four sitters and one mid-season addition) are talented beyond their years, but the dialogue never makes them sound like 40-year-old Hollywood scriptwriters.

I'm delighted to find that Netflix's 10-episode adaptation of the series is not only warm and effervescent — it's downright among the best shows the streaming platform has produced to date.

Isn’t an anachronism so much as a tonic. ... The show strikes a shrewd balance between earnestness and humor, freshness and nostalgia, fidelity to Martin’s beloved characters and awareness of how much has changed since her books dominated girl culture at the end of the 20th century. ... This may all sound painstakingly woke on paper, but nothing feels forced about these updates. The main cast is spirited and authentic.

The patter of life in Stonybrook is almost strenuously amiable, full of productive lessons to learn and pretty houses in which pleasant people dwell. But within that gentle framing, Shukert and her writing staff find plenty of complexity and shading, smoothly reshaping the now slightly dated vernacular of Martin’s era into something that makes responsible sense in 2020. Again, this is a show for kids (and, yes, nostalgic adults), and its approach to that demographic’s interests is neither harsh nor dishonestly rosy.

It’s sweet, and honest, and nice, in a way that feels just as refreshing as the girls’ old-fashioned business model.