I liked Home Before Dark probably more than other people would.
The reason is that I identified with the protagonist just so very much. She’s a misfit, a nine-year-old journalist and someone out of place no matter where she is. She’s precocious and adults constantly doubt her knowledge and capabilities and of course lie to her. One of the first few lines of her narration is in fact, “Since I’m a kid, people lie to me all the time.”
When I was that age, I’d been reading adult-level books for four years already. I knew more than almost any adult around me about anything. I constantly had people explaining topics to me that I knew far better than they did — and would get very angry when I demonstrated my knowledge and caught them in their obvious and absurd lies. So yes, I identify with Hilde very much indeed.
Also something important and related. It’d be called “gaslighting” today I guess, but it was perfectly handled how the adults in her life constantly invalidate and discredit her very accurate perceptions of events, even attempting to cajole her into denying her own experiences. I remember that all too well. There was no quicker way at the time to spark adult rage than to call them out on this!
So yes, I do have a lot of leftover resentment from that time. Watching the show was a way to disencumber myself of a bit of it.
Also familiar: even her own father rails at her to just be more normal and to try to act more like everyone else. “Dammit, Hilde, why can’t you just be a little kid for just once in your life?!” is a line he uses. My dad said nearly identical things to me constantly, just with even more cursing.
The scene where Hilde is walking into her school and everyone is gazing at her with undisguised derision and disdain — I’ve lived that. It was perfectly done. The writer who wrote that had almost certainly lived that too.
There’s another great scene with the principal telling the protagonist’s mother that something Hilde does is “developmentally inappropriate for her age.” I had teachers tell me and my parents that same phrase numerous times, including after one incident that was very similar to what Hilde herself did in the show. To my mom’s credit, she responded, “I doubt it, since he’s been doing it since he was six.” (I was 10 at the time.)
Writing a paper in my spare time (as Hilde does) is literally what I almost got expelled for in ninth grade, so Hilde having the same issues is very resonant with me indeed.
It’s hard for me to determine if the show is good or not because of the consonance with my own life and experiences. I think so, but I cannot separate the two enough to tell.