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The CW Network debuts their Tom Swift TV show on Tuesday, May 31, 2022 from 9:00 to 10:00 PM.

From the CW Press Release: Tom Swift is an exceptionally brilliant inventor with unlimited resources and unimaginable wealth.

Shaken to the core by the shocking disappearance of his father, Tom is thrust into a breathtaking adventure of mysterious conspiracies and unexplained phenomena.

Tom finds himself fighting to stay one step ahead of an Illuminati-scale cabal hellbent on stopping him.

Aiding Tom is his best friend Zenzi whose unabashed and unvarnished candor keeps Tom grounded while she forges a path for herself as a business visionary. Isaac is Tom's dedicated bodyguard. Barclay is Tom's A.I. (voiced by Levar Burton) whose insights and tough love have been a constant throughout Tom's life.

Sidebar: I've always wondered why such an interesting book character such as Tom Swift has not had adaptations to film or television. Other teenage detectives and contemporaries of Tom such as the Hardy Boys & Nancy Drew pop up over the years in film, but mostly TV.

Tom didn't.

Sidebar: Perhaps once you factor in the astonishing inventions Tom creates that make him so interesting you are now dealing with the challenge of very expensive special/visual effects. That fact can be offsetting to a film or TV production because if you're gonna do Tom right then you'd better have his fantastic gizmos as part of the ride. His intriguing inventions are what separates him from Frank, Joe, and Nancy.

Creating those visual effects pre-CGI would have made Tom Swift nearly impossible unless you had massive budget.

Reading the CW Press Release, I'll give you that some of the series concepts do come off as rather formulaic. Missing loved one, check.

Dastardly covert organization of evildoers, check. Those ideas are right out of a playbook from these kind of shows.

Sidebar: However, I remain a fan of Tom Swift and am excited to finally see someone bringing him to life on TV. His inventions will be marvelous to see come to life providing the show has a healthy budget for 'em all.

Certainly we're now at a special/visual effects technological level that this series can be done in an impressive manner.

We can only hope and pray the writing, directing, and cast will make this show worthwhile.

The science fiction portion of the show will be in regards to the hardware, of course. But the press release also mentions encounters with "unexplained phenomena" that clearly leaves the door open to further SF aspects besides Tom's awesome apparatuses.