Review: ‘Wednesday’ reimagined as a ghoul loving detective

The series Wednesday centered on the sociopathic daughter of the Addam’s Family belongs to Disney breakout star Jenny Ortega. She leaves her stamp on the character who is now high school age.

Hyderabad: Fans of the cult movies The Addams Family and its sequel may not find the same level of macabre and ghoulish humour in the new Netflix series Wednesday, but it does manage to achieve a similar vibe like its canon.

The series Wednesday centered on the sociopathic daughter of the Addam’s Family belongs to Disney breakout star Jenny Ortega. She leaves her stamp on the character who is now high school age. She brings a coolness to Wednesday Addams who turns into a rookie detective when a monster starts attacking people at her new school Nevermore Academy.

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Her parents, Morticia and Gomez, hope Wednesday will make new friends at the academy which is a supernatural school complete with werewolves, vampires and witches as teachers and students. It’s like Hogwarts, but darker. Jenny carries the whole show on her tiny shoulders and does a good job of it. She aces the unnerving stare of Wednesday and her character’s propensity for all things macabre. However, fans who were expecting some punchy dialogues from her will be disappointed due to poor writing.

Wednesday also seems to have some newly developed psychic powers and visions that she is still getting used to.

Surprisingly, Christina Ricci who played the famous character in the ’90s films returns as teacher at the Nevermore Academy, only she has crossed over to the ‘normal’ side. In the little screen time that she gets, Catherine Zeta-Jones looks marvelous as the hauntingly beautiful Morticia Addams as does her on-screen husband Luis Guzman who is fantastically casted as Gomez. Unfortunately, they appear largely only in one episode.

The animated hand, ‘The Thing’, however, is always around and provides a lot of the comedic relief in the eight-episode series. Don’t expect much of a story here as the source material itself isn’t some complex mystery.

Tim Burton who directed the first four episodes has managed to infuse his own influence while keeping the original’s flavour intact here. Like its predecessors, it might go on to become a cult classic in later days.