Halloween Costume Idea For Kids
Maudie solves crimes at her primary school with a notebook, a flat delivery, and zero patience for guessing. The boots are the one detail that actually matters: the show makes a point of her wearing them instead of the regulation school shoes, because she has never once cared how she looks. Anna Cooke plays her, and had to cut her hair short for the role. The InBESTigators aired two seasons on ABC Me and Netflix starting in 2019, so recognition depends entirely on whether the person you’re talking to has kids who watched it.
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The boots get noticed first, and they need to look like actual boots, not sneakers or school flats with a costume tag on them. If they’re missing, the rest of the outfit reads as a kid in a plain school uniform instead of a specific character. At a party, the risk is the opposite problem: too much extra layering. Skip the varsity jacket and trench coat if you’re indoors, since Maudie’s actual look is plain and a little undone, not styled.
She walks into a room, states the answer to whatever went wrong that day, and keeps moving. No dramatic reveal, no pause for effect. If you want to play the part at a party, that flat delivery is the whole bit. Announce something obvious the same way you’d announce a crime solved.
Keep the notebook prop small and specific
A plain, worn-looking notebook works better than a decorated one. Maudie’s notebook matters to her because of what’s inside it, not how it looks on the outside, so an overly crafted prop actually undersells the reference. A small spiral pad you can flip open one-handed is closer to the mark.
Don’t fix her hair
Short and a little messy is correct. If you’re using a wig or a clip-in fringe, resist the urge to style it neatly, since the show makes a point of Maudie not caring about her appearance. A too-polished version of “messy short hair” reads as a different, more put-together character.
Squad Idea
Excellent as a full group, since the four of them are always shown together and each has a distinct enough look that the set reads instantly to anyone who has seen the show. Maudie in boots, Ezra with his notebook and theories, Ava as the organized one, and Kyle as the distracted one who somehow still helps solve the case. You need all four for it to click, though. Three of the four just reads as kids in school clothes.
Duo Idea
Strong if the crowd actually knows the show, since Ezra and Maudie are the two the plot centers on and their dynamic, him unsure, her completely certain, is the engine of most episodes. Without that context, it just reads as two kids in school uniforms, one with a notebook. Works best at a school event or a party where other people already know the source material.
Family Idea
Might work, but this one only makes sense to people who watched closely enough to know Maudie’s dad by name. He’s a background character, a neurosurgeon who tells bad jokes, so the pairing has no strong visual hook on its own. A parent-and-kid duo at a family event where the reference doesn’t need to land with strangers is really the only place this works.
Most of this is stuff already sitting in a kid’s closet. The boots are the one item worth actually buying if you don’t already have a pair, since nothing else on this list carries the costume without them.
Maudie doesn’t perform. She observes, states a conclusion, and moves on to the next thing. That’s a much easier character to play at a party than it sounds, because it just means saying less.
Start with a school-style layer, denim overall or the trench coat over a plaid or dress shirt, then add leggings. The polo shirt is the closest match to her actual show uniform. Finish with the boots, since that is the one detail the show itself calls out as hers.
Niche. The InBESTigators only ran two seasons on Netflix and ABC Me back in 2019 and 2020, so most adults will not place her on sight. Kids who grew up on the show, especially younger ones who found it on Netflix well after it aired, are the ones who will recognize her immediately.
Her catchphrase is a flat, matter-of-fact “This is what happened,” delivered right before she lays out the solution to a case. She is also on record saying “I never saw Kyle acting too silly,” a line from The Case of the Unhappy Camper that sums up how she reads her friends.
Maudie is played by Anna Cooke. She has said in interviews that she had to cut her hair short for the role after seeing an audition notice in her school newsletter (Maudie Miller Wiki).
She is the lead of The InBESTigators, an Australian mystery comedy that aired on ABC Me from June to November 2019, with Netflix releasing both seasons internationally in 2019 and 2020 (The Inbestigators). It has stayed available on Netflix in most regions since.
It is a character choice built into the show. Maudie wears boots instead of the regulation school shoes and keeps her hair short instead of the standard ponytail, because she genuinely does not think about how she looks. It is the detail that makes her read as her rather than a generic school kid.
What does Maudie wear instead of the regulation school shoes?
Which actress plays Maudie Miller in The InBESTigators?
Where did The InBESTigators originally air before Netflix picked it up internationally?