Wednesday

Beautiful to look at and perfectly cast, this promising dark series largely misses the mark by diving into teen mystery and school drama clichés instead of taking us anywhere new. Viewers may at first take a liking to Wednesday: Jenna Ortega is absolutely, positively the ideal Wednesday and a worthy successor to Christina Ricci, who memorably inhabited the character in two popular 1990s movies (and here shows up as Wednesday's dorm house mother, who may have hidden depths). Ortega's darkly ironic humor and barely concealed emotional pain both add depth to her portrayal, and we appreciate that her relationship with mom Morticia is a relatably complex one, with the two sparring and supporting each other by turns.

But Wednesday makes several crucial mistakes. First, part of the fun of the Addams family has always been the family, a loving and supportive unit despite the dark and spooky ways. By marooning Wednesday in a boarding school in the very first episode, the narrative loses a lot of fizz. Second, the school reads as a Hogwarts rip-off, and the characters there like the laziest of school stereotypes. Why bother introducing a school for outcasts if you're just going to transplant the same cool-kids-vs.-outsiders storylines from any second-rate cinematic school? The final nail in the coffin is the wan murder mystery, which again has a Harry Potter-esque vibe, with a family secret that stretches back to Morticia and Gomez's time at the school and a mysterious Big Bad that Wednesday alone can dispatch. We wish this had been a story about a singular, sympathetic character finding her groove; as it is, Wednesday reads like a mashup of dark teen dramas that fails to cast a spell.