HBO Max’s ‘Velma’ Can’t Scare Up a Reason to Exist: TV Review

HBO Max's "Velma" is a modern re-imagining of the "Scooby-Doo" cartoon series, which maintains the basic elements of the original cartoon but takes liberties with the story and characters.

Reviewer Joshua Alston notes that the show is irreverent to a fault and that it fails to offer a compelling reason for its existence.

He also points out that the show's demographic swaps, where the characters are of different races than in the original cartoon, is not the most striking thing about "Velma."

He finds that the most striking thing about the show is that it centers Velma's queer identity, but that this has been done before in another "Scooby-Doo" series, "Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated," which did it better. Alston concludes that "Velma" is never as interesting as it wants to be.