• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Catholic Review

Catholic Review

Inspiring the Archdiocese of Baltimore

Menu
  • Home
  • News
        • Local News
        • World News
        • Vatican News
        • Obituaries
        • Featured Video
        • En Español
        • Sports News
        • Official Clergy Assignments
        • Schools News
  • Commentary
        • Contributors
          • Question Corner
          • George Weigel
          • Elizabeth Scalia
          • Michael R. Heinlein
          • Effie Caldarola
          • Guest Commentary
        • CR Columnists
          • Archbishop William E. Lori
          • Rita Buettner
          • Christopher Gunty
          • George Matysek Jr.
          • Mark Viviano
          • Father Joseph Breighner
          • Father Collin Poston
          • Robyn Barberry
          • Hanael Bianchi
          • Amen Columns
  • Entertainment
        • Events
        • Movie & Television Reviews
        • Arts & Culture
        • Books
        • Recipes
  • About Us
        • Contact Us
        • Our History
        • Meet Our Staff
        • Photos to own
        • Books/CDs/Prayer Cards
        • CR Media platforms
        • Electronic Edition
  • Advertising
  • Shop
        • Purchase Photos
        • Books/CDs/Prayer Cards
        • Magazine Subscriptions
        • Archdiocesan Directory
  • CR Radio
        • CR Radio
        • Protagonistas de Fe
  • News Tips
  • Subscribe
Jenna Ortega, from left) as Wednesday Addams and Luis Guzmán as Gomez Addams in “Wednesday.” (Courtesy of Netflix)

Television Review: ‘Wednesday’

December 12, 2022
By John Mulderig
Catholic Review
Filed Under: Movie & Television Reviews

Share
Share on Facebook
Share
Share this
Pin
Pin this
Share
Share on LinkedIn

NEW YORK – The cartoons of Charles Addams (1912-1988) have cast a long and darkly humorous shadow. Collected in books and adapted to a wide variety of media, his work has proved to have a rich and enduringly popular legacy.

Thus, the mid-1960s saw the debut of the live-action ABC television show, “The Addams Family.” In the mid-’70s, an animated version aired briefly as Saturday-morning fare on NBC-TV. Twenty years after that, ABC took a shot at its own cartoon series, with John Astin, the network’s original Gomez Addams, now voicing the clan’s merrily morbid patriarch.

Around the same time, Barry Sonnenfeld directed two films – the eponymous original and the sequel “Addams Family Values” – that met with a mixed fate both at the box office and at the hands of critics.

Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams in “Wednesday.” (Courtesy of Netflix)

Poor financial returns from the second movie left the future of the big-screen franchise in doubt. But any extension of it seems to have been stymied entirely by the premature death, in 1994, of Raul Julia, who had taken on Astin’s role.

More than 25 years elapsed before a duo of less-than-memorable animated features followed, both co-directed by Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon. Video games and a straight-to-DVD film are other entries in the canon.

Now, Tim Burton steps forward as director of “Wednesday,” a spin-off named for, and focused on, the comically macabre family’s daughter. All eight episodes of the series, which stars Jenna Ortega in the title role, are streaming on Netflix.

Given the affinity between Burton’s sensibility and Addams’, the creative combination would seem, at first blush, to be a promising one. Yet, despite impressive gothic atmospherics, a laser-intense performance from Ortega and the occasional witty exchange in the dialogue, a diffuse plot with too many competing storylines keeps the production from fully coalescing.

Both the tone of the show and its appropriate audience are indicated by the opening sequence. Out to avenge her bullied little brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez), whose persecutors are on their school’s swim team, Wednesday introduces piranha into the pool in which the loutish lads are practicing – with momentarily, but explicitly, gory consequences.

Taking Wednesday’s subsequent expulsion as an opportunity, her parents, Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and the aforementioned Gomez (Luis Guzmán), enroll her in their alma mater, Nevermore Academy. As might be guessed from the couple’s attendance there, Nevermore’s student body is made up of outcast oddballs.

Intent on escaping rather than fitting in, Wednesday is closely watched by Nevermore’s stately principal, Larissa Weems (Gwendoline Christie). She’s also annoyed by the cheerfulness of her new roommate, Enid Sinclair (Emma Myers), and by the smugness of Nevermore’s reigning queen bee, Bianca Barclay (Joy Sunday).

Add to the mix at least two potential love interests, classmate Xavier Thorpe (Percy Hynes White) and local barista Tyler Galpin (Hunter Doohan), as well as mysteries past and present, and the sense that showrunners and writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar have thrown too many balls into the air at once becomes unmistakable. The excess of elements thwarts audience attention.

Though sexual content is absent from the first two installments reviewed, gruesome images and some crude expressions put the program strictly off-limits for kids. Mature teens, by contrast, may take these eerie and earthy ingredients more or less in stride. Like adults, however, they’ll probably find it difficult to stay focused on Wednesday’s overly disparate doings.

Read More Movie & Television Reviews

Home viewing roundup: What’s available to stream and what’s on horizon

Movie Review: ‘Freakier Friday’

Movie Review: ‘The Naked Gun’

Review: ‘Art Detectives,’ streaming, Acorn TV

Movie Review: ‘The Bad Guys 2’

The Fantastic Four: First Steps

Movie Review: ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps’

Copyright © 2022 Catholic Review Media

Print Print

Share
Share on Facebook
Share
Share this
Pin
Pin this
Share
Share on LinkedIn

Primary Sidebar

John Mulderig

Formerly a staff member for Catholic News Service, John Mulderig has been reviewing visual media from a Catholic perspective for 15 years. His column is syndicated by Catholic Review Media. Follow his reviews on Twitter @CatholicMovie.

View all posts from this author

For the latest news delivered twice a week via email or text message, sign up to receive our free enewsletter.

| MOST POPULAR |

  • The ‘both/and’ pope

  • Patrick Brice sentenced to home detention for attacks on elderly pro-life supporters

  • Statue of Confederate general known as anti-Catholic to be reinstalled in nation’s capital

  • Movie Review: ‘The Naked Gun’

  • Gun buyback exceeds expectations, previous totals

| CURRENT EDITION |

CR digital edition

| Vatican News |

Pope says he hopes Trump-Putin meeting leads to ceasefire in Ukraine

Hope is knowing God is always ready to forgive, pope says at audience

Pope prays world leaders recognize their responsibility for peace

Works of mercy are best way to invest what God gave you, pope says

‘Rerum Novarum’ 2.0? Catholic labor advocates heartened by Pope Leo’s direction

| Catholic Review Radio |

CatholicReview · Catholic Review Radio

| Movie & Television Reviews |

Home viewing roundup: What’s available to stream and what’s on horizon

Movie Review: ‘Freakier Friday’

Movie Review: ‘The Naked Gun’

Review: ‘Art Detectives,’ streaming, Acorn TV

Movie Review: ‘The Bad Guys 2’

| En español |

Cardenal salvadoreño: ‘Queremos vivir la democracia’

León XIV: Pontífice de las fronteras y los puentes

‘No tengan miedo de hacer lo que El Señor quiere para nosotros’

Dios quiere ayudar a las personas a descubrir su valor y dignidad, dice el Papa

El ‘Padre Migrante’ nos relata su vida sirviendo a comunidades inmigrantes

Footer

Our Vision

Real Life. Real Faith. 

Catholic Review Media communicates the Gospel and its impact on people’s lives in the Archdiocese of Baltimore and beyond.

Our Mission

Catholic Review Media provides intergenerational communications that inform, teach, inspire and engage Catholics and all of good will in the mission of Christ through diverse forms of media.

Contact

Catholic Review
320 Cathedral Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
443-524-3150
mail@CatholicReview.org

 

Social Media

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Recent

  • Baltimore NBCC leader among People of Life awards winners
  • Pope says he hopes Trump-Putin meeting leads to ceasefire in Ukraine
  • Sisters of Life ‘are the very mirror of God,’ cardinal says as 3 take perpetual vows
  • For Gazans, the deep silence of hunger has replaced noise of daily life
  • Hope is knowing God is always ready to forgive, pope says at audience
  • Images of Mary: Can we find the Blessed Mother in the Old Testament?
  • Report: Christian church attacks down, but recent totals still higher than 2018-2022
  • How public opinion can influence migration policies
  • Question Corner: Is it simony that my parish wants to charge a fee for having a funeral livestreamed?

Search

Membership

Catholic Media Assocation

Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association

The Associated Church Press

© 2025 CATHOLIC REVIEW MEDIA, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

en Englishes Spanish
en en