FAMILY REUNION
WEDNESDAY Addams is still the girl we remember – smart, sarcastic, pale, dressed from head to toe in black and white and a little dead inside.
But in this brilliantly fun series focusing on, let’s be honest, the best Addams family member, everything is brought bang up to date. Cinematic opening titles, with a musical score by Danny Elfman and the promise of Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia, there’s a new energy to the well-known premise. Jenna Ortega plays teenager We d n e s d a y , who is expelled from her most recent high school for nearly killing someone when she threw piranhas into the swimming pool.
Her victim deserved it – he’d bullied her little brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez), tying him up and locking him in a school locker.
Now she’s stalking the corridors at Nevermore Academy, a place for people like her. It’s full of the usual high school cliques – mermaids, werewolves, vampires. The other students are suspicious of her. One says her black and white look is “just like an Insta filter”.
Wednesday says: “Social media is a soul sucking void of meaningless affirmation.” Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzman are hilarious as Morticia and Gomez, and look out for Christina Ricci – the original Wednesday – as the frumpy school ‘dorm mum’. Wednesday has to deal with strange visions, annoying students, forced therapy and a sheriff investigating a local spate of murders.
Not even furiously playing the Stones’ Paint It, Black (nice touch) on her cello makes her feel any better.
Also starring Gwendoline Christie as Nevermore’s headteacher, with appearances from Lurch and Thing, this feels both nostalgic and brand new.