WEDNESDAY S1 Review 🤩

Based on the characters from the popular TV show from the 1960s, The Addams Family, this series focuses, interestingly enough, on the least focused and least interesting character from the original series, the teenage daughter, Wednesday Addams.

By choosing this character from the original show that we know so little about, director Tim Burton offers us Wednesday’s backstory as she is sent off to the weirdest boarding school on the planet, Nevermore Academy, where the creepy and kooky can thrive. At its essence, WEDNESDAY is yet another teenage angst tale of Woe, but with a winking eye. Season One has our intrepid hero dealing with her growing psychic powers while she helps solve a series of grisly murders, where, oddly enough, she seems to be the only one really disturbed by them.

Jenna Ortega, as Wednesday, essentially creates her character from scratch, and while she makes it very clear that she hates everyone, especially her mom Morticia, and is fine with everyone hating her, she does have a strong sense of justice and attempts to protect the underdogs in a school that is all underdogs, giving us glimpses of her sympathetic soul. The “Dawson’s Creek teen-agy” plotlines can occasionally underwhelm the excellent performances by the great ensemble cast, but the series is just off-balance enough to remind us that, at its core, this is a Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys mystery – for those of you old enough to get that reference.

WEDNESDAY Season One is now streaming on NETFLIX.