TV review: Irish-filmed Wednesday is the perfect watch for parents and teens
Wednesday. Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams in episode 203 of Wednesday.
If you’re looking for something to watch with your teenager, make it .
My wife and our teenage daughter raved about the first series. You hate to be left out of these things, so I made the teenager watch the first episode of season two.
The story isn’t really the thing, it’s just an American take on Harry Potter, with more teenage sass. But the performances are off the scale. Jenna Ortega is hilarious as Wednesday Addams, completely believable as your goth older sister. No smiles, no affection, she ‘plays the cello, not the violin’ as she puts it herself.
Catherine Zeta-Jones is her mother Morticia, a caring Mom behind the tough witch exterior.
The stand-out so far in season two is Steve Buscemi as Barry Dort, the new principal of Nevermore, the school for outcasts that hosts all the action. You forget that he’s just very very good at acting. Here he is, The Simpsons’ Ned Flanders made flesh, full of go-getting cliches and funny clangers, none better when he introduces a song from ‘that great American outcast, Bruce Springsteen’.
What really makes Wednesday is that it has Tim Burton all over it. He’s the executive producer and directs a few episodes so not only does it look great, but he makes it possible to laugh out loud in terror during a few scenes.
The hook in season two is that Wednesday has a stalker. (She also has a black heart, so she’s delighted with this.) Just like in season one, where she finally revealed the identity of a monster terrorising the school, we’re given a raft of suspects for the baddy.
Principal Barry Dort is in the frame because he’s such an obvious dork. Billie Piper’s superb character Miss Capri is a bit too perfect, so we have her card marked ‘psycho’ as well. Joanna Lumley is cropping up later as Wednesday’s granny, so you’d think it wouldn’t be her, which means it probably is
But really, the enjoyment here is the lightness of touch, as the story sends up high-school dramas one minute, and super-violent horrors the next. Who knew that bleak evil could be so funny?
My daughter for one. I loved watching it with her, laughing at the same jokes, telling her she was only slightly grumpier than Wednesday Addams. We’ve gone beyond those animated Disney shows like Frozen that were made to give Mom and Dad a laugh as well.
You don’t need to have watched season one of Wednesday to pick up on season two, but there is no good reason to miss TV this good. Give it a watch, with or without a teenager.
