Format: live-action docu-fiction. The girls play themselves as THE WOLFE GIRLS DETECTIVE AGENCY. Wes-Anderson-flat symmetry + Nancy Drew clue-chain + real Vermont places rendered exactly. Nick on camera. Heather cameo.
Canon this is built on (all true): a bear took seven hens in June. One hen survived. Nick is rebuilding a stone wall and the goats keep sabotaging it. Norah works at the Woodstock Farmers' Market and loves it. Helen writes cards to elders for the church care team and climbs. Esther shoots Polaroids stamped "Photo by Esther."
The Nancy Drew spine: a real mystery, a ticking clock, three suspects, two red herrings, clues the audience can solve along with the girls, zero magic, one warm rational reveal.
1. INT. FARMHOUSE KITCHEN — WAYSIDE ROAD — EARLY MORNING
Macro shots, dead-center framing: a cast-iron pan. Six eggs in a wire basket. A seventh egg cup — EMPTY. A hand-lettered index card taped to the fridge: "CLEMENTINE — SOLE SURVIVOR."
NORAH (V.O., reading from a marbled composition casebook, dead serious)
Casebook of the Wolfe Girls Detective Agency. Entry one. In June, a black bear came down off the hill and took seven of our hens in one night. We know it was the bear. There were... signs.
2. EXT. CHICKEN COOP — CONTINUOUS
Whip-pan to the coop. The door hangs open. Symmetrical push-in on an empty roost bar.
NORAH (V.O.)
Clementine survived the bear. Clementine survived the fox that got the Hendersons' rooster. Clementine has survived everything Vermont has thrown at her.
(beat)
This morning, Clementine was gone.
3. INSERT — POLAROID, developing in real time
The empty roost swims into focus. A marker hand-stamps the white border: "Photo by Esther."
ESTHER (O.S.)
It's evidence now.
SMASH TO:
TITLE CARD — hand-painted on a barn board, hung on the coop wire:
WAYSIDE MYSTERIES
Episode One: The Case of the Vanishing Hen
(Score: pizzicato strings + a single hen cluck as the sting.)
4. EXT. FRONT PORCH HQ — MORNING
The three girls in a flat symmetrical lineup behind a card table. On the table: the casebook, a magnifying glass, three enamel mugs, a kitchen timer.
NORAH
Agency rules. One: we follow evidence, not feelings.
HELEN
Two: nobody touches the crime scene till Esther shoots it.
ESTHER
Three: I get the last cinnamon roll for equipment fees.
NORAH
That has never been a rule.
Norah flips the kitchen timer — THE CLOCK IS THE EPISODE'S ENGINE:
NORAH (CONT'D)
I'm on the dish pit at the Market at two. We solve this by then, or Clementine spends a night out there with whatever took her.
5. EXT. CHICKEN COOP — THE CRIME SCENE — MORNING
Procedural montage, overhead God-shots, Esther's Polaroids punctuating each clue like chapter stamps:
6. EXT. THE STONE WALL — MORNING
WIDE SHOT, locals will recognize the truth of it: a classic Vermont dry-stone wall, half beautiful, half rubble, wheelbarrow, string lines, and a gap in the middle like a missing tooth. THREE GOATS stand on the finished section. Chewing. Staring directly into camera.
HELEN
Suspects.
NORAH
Everyone's a suspect.
7. INT. BARN — THE SUSPECT BOARD — LATE MORNING
Butcher paper. Three suspects, each with an Esther Polaroid portrait:
NORAH
Dad. Where were the goats last night?
8. EXT. STONE WALL — CONTINUOUS
DAD (Nick), work gloves, sets a stone. It settles. A goat immediately puts one hoof on it. He does not look at the goat. This is their whole relationship.
DAD
Paddock. Gate was latched, I checked at nine. And before you ask — a bear doesn't tiptoe. If the bear came back, you'd know.
NORAH (writing)
Goats: alibi'd. Bear: no signs. Egg Thief...
ESTHER
Still at large.
(Polaroid flash directly in a goat's face; the goat does not blink)
They're not scared of anything. I respect it.
RED HERRING #1: Helen finds a PRINT in the garden mud — small, hoof-like, weirdly... plastic? Norah: "Cast it." Esther, too quickly: "Or don't." — button for later.
9. EXT. WAYSIDE ROAD → VILLAGE — MIDDAY — BIKE MONTAGE
Three bikes in staggered formation. REAL GEOGRAPHY, shot to be checkable:
10. INT. F.H. GILLINGHAM & SONS — ELM STREET — MIDDAY
The real thing, est. 1886: creaking floorboards, hardware next to maple syrup next to penny candy. The girls buy: a ball of twine, sidewalk chalk, and one paper sack of cracked corn ("bait budget"). The counter clerk raises an eyebrow at the shopping list.
HELEN
We're detectives.
CLERK
Fourth generation of Woodstock kids to tell me that in this store.
11. EXT. MRS. PERKINS' PORCH — SOUTH STREET — EARLY AFTERNOON
THE KINDNESS CLUE — the Nancy Drew move where being decent IS the method. Helen peels off from the investigation to deliver a church care-team card. MRS. PERKINS (80s, sharp as a tack) reads it, delighted. Tea appears. Helen, antsy, glances at the time.
MRS. PERKINS
A vanished hen, you say. No feathers?
(sips)
When I kept hens on this street, I lost one for three weeks. Grieved her. Found her under the woodpile sitting on eleven eggs, smug as a senator.
(leans in)
A hen that's gone broody, dear, doesn't run away. She hides. Somewhere dark, dry, and warm — and she'll go silent as church on Monday.
CLOSE ON HELEN: the gears turning. Dark. Dry. Warm.
12. INT. WOODSTOCK FARMERS' MARKET — ROUTE 4 — 2:00 PM
Norah ties on her apron — REAL JOB, REAL DISH PIT. Steam, spray hose, the clatter of the lunch rush. This sequence plays as a love letter to work: Wes-flat shots of the pit, the sandwich boards, the prep line. Norah is GOOD at this, fast and calm.
(Locals' note in frame: the Market sits on Route 4 just west of the village — the store that came back after Irene. It earns its cameo.)
Over the sink, Norah works the case the way you work a sink: methodically. INTERCUT her hands racking plates with FLASH-INSERTS of the day's evidence.
NORAH (V.O.)
No struggle. No feathers. Corn moving TOWARD the wall, not away from it. Goats loitering where goats have no business... unless something spilled there. Dark. Dry. Warm—
The spray hose stops mid-air.
NORAH
(quietly, to a stack of clean plates)
The wall. She's IN the wall.
13. INT. MARKET — BREAK ROOM — MOMENTS LATER
Norah's refurbished iPhone 15, group text "WGDA 🔍": Esther's Polaroids photographed and re-sent (a Polaroid of a Polaroid — the agency's chain of custody). Norah zooms photo #3 — the wall gap. In the shadow of the cavity: a pale curve. Egg-shaped.
NORAH (TEXT, ON SCREEN)
"MEET AT THE WALL. 5:30. DO NOT SPOOK ANYTHING."
RED HERRING #2 RESOLVED: Under the break-room table, Esther-by-text confesses the garden print: her horse LEGO. She'd been "testing the soil for hoofprint quality." Case note: stricken from evidence. Photographer fined one cinnamon roll.
14. EXT. THE STONE WALL — GOLDEN HOUR
The whole valley goes amber. The three girls approach in a wide symmetrical line, gear silhouetted: casebook, twine, Polaroid. Dad stands down the slope, told only: "Don't move the goats."
A long, held silence. Even the goats lean in.
HELEN
(whisper down to them)
Dark. Dry. Warm.
(beat)
And EXTREMELY smug.
15. INSERT — THE CAVITY — HELEN'S POV
Straw Nick had stacked for backfill. Spilled cracked corn from the feed bucket he keeps by the wheelbarrow — the goats' actual target all along. And CLEMENTINE, sitting a clutch of eggs, regarding the flashlight with the outrage of a dowager duchess.
16. EXT. THE STONE WALL — CONTINUOUS
NORAH (closing the casebook, verdict voice)
Findings. Nobody took Clementine. Clementine went broody, cased the property, and selected the only new construction on it. The goats weren't saboteurs — they were witnesses. Following the spilled corn.
(beat, generous)
The wall wasn't broken, Dad. It was ADOPTED.
DAD
(long look at the gap he now cannot fill)
...I'll build around her.
17. MONTAGE — "THE CLEMENTINE GATE" — DUSK
Dad and the girls dry-stack a small lintel over the cavity — a hen-sized arch in a two-hundred-year-old craft. Locals will clock that the stonework is done RIGHT: hearting stones, through-stones, no mortar. Heather arrives with lemonade, surveys the wall with a nurse's triage glance:
MOM
Twenty years at Dartmouth Health and my first week off, this family opens a maternity ward.
Esther poses everyone. Self-timer. The FLASH becomes the cut.
18. INSERT — THE CASE WALL — NIGHT
Corkboard in the barn. The suspect board, all three suspects crossed out. One last Polaroid pinned dead center: Clementine on her clutch, framed by the stone arch. Border stamped:
"CASE CLOSED. Photo by Esther."
19. EXT. THE CLEMENTINE GATE — "21 DAYS LATER" (hand-lettered card)
Macro: the straw stirs. ONE, TWO... SIX chicks spill out of the wall like the world's smallest jailbreak. The goats watch, unmoved. Esther's Polaroid whirs.
NORAH (V.O.)
Casebook, final entry. Agency record: one case, one solve. Six new clients.
20. THE HOOK — EP 102 TEASE
Norah's phone buzzes on the porch rail. She reads, frowns, holds it up. INSERT — a text from a school friend:
"you know how the gorge echoes back? yesterday it echoed FIRST."
MATCH CUT: the green steel arch of the Quechee Gorge bridge, 165 feet over the river, in silhouette.
ESTHER (O.S.)
(camera whir)
It's evidence now.
CUT TO BLACK.
Locations (all real, all within ~15 min of Wayside Rd):
Why each girl will love it (from the sweep, sensitive items deliberately excluded from all creative):
Nancy Drew inheritance, explicit: ticking clock (the 2 PM shift), three suspects with alibis, two red herrings (LEGO hoofprint, the "returned bear"), the kindness-unlocks-the-clue move (pure Keene), a flashlight reveal, a rational solution, a case wall, and a serialized hook.
Broad-appeal thesis: sisters + animals + real small town + solvable mystery = the Bluey/Great British Bake Off overlap zone — gentle stakes, real craft, zero irony. The felted Tide Pool lane and this live-action lane can share one "handmade Vermont/Maine" brand shelf.
Runtime map: Cold open 1:15 · Act 1 2:45 · Act 2 3:30 · Act 3 3:15 · Stinger 0:30 ≈ 11:15.
Shoot estimate: 2 days (Day 1 home + wall + coop; Day 2 village + Market + Perkins porch + gorge plate), golden-hour dependent for Act 3.
Wayside Mysteries E101 · script v1.0 · Anvil · 2026-07-21