Veronica Mars is an American television series created by
Rob Thomas.
The series premiered on September 22, 2004, during
UPN's last two years, and ended on May 22, 2007, after a season on UPN's successor,
The CW Television Network.
Balancing murder mystery, high-school and college drama, the series features social commentary with sarcasm and off-beat humor in a style often compared to
film noir.
Set in the fictional town of Neptune, the series starred
Kristen Bell as the
title character, a student who progressed from high school to college during the series while moonlighting as a
private investigator under the wing of her detective father. Thomas originally wrote
Veronica Mars as a young adult novel, featuring a male as the protagonist.
Episodes have a distinct structure: Veronica solves a different "case of the week" while continually trying to solve a season-long mystery.
The first two seasons of the series had a season-long mystery arc, introduced in the first episode of the season and solved in the season finale.
The third season took on a different format, focusing on smaller mystery arcs that would last the course of several episodes.
Said to be "a little bit
Buffy and a little bit
Bogart",
the critically acclaimed first season's run of 22 episodes garnered an average of 2.5 million viewers per episode in the United States.
[ The second season decreased to an average of 2.3 million viewers,][ however it included the series' highest rated episode with 3.6 million viewers.]
