Like a lot of men my age, I've never read a single Sabrina or Archie comic, and my sole exposure to the franchise was a 90s tv series about a sub-urban witch and her talking cat. The new Sabrina doesn't have a talking cat. Worst adaptation ever.
The first thing that strikes me about Sabrina is its tone. There is some of that Riverdale dark and edgy I don't normally like, but Sabrina manages to offset it by also having lots of utterly goofy and silly moments that look straight out of a Buffy. But then it manages to temper that in turn by throwing in lots of way darker and more violent stuff than a lot of modern horror movies. It's all kinds of things at once and Sabrina makes these conflicting tones fit really well together. Aesthetically, it's set in both the 70s and modern day at the same time, but it never really screams out to you as being out of place; again it gets that balance right.
The plot of Sabrina is that she is a half witch, coming up to her 16th Birthday. According to tradition, she is expected to sell her soul to Satan - here, a giant Bahomet goat monster - to become a fully fledged Witch. Sabrina isn't sold on the idea though, being both a teenager with human friends, and also a third-wave feminist. Seriously, I'm not simplifying that there for comic effect. Sabrina's main characteristic is that she wants to smash the patriarchy. She even forms a feminist society called "WICCA", just to make the witchcraft as female empowerment allegory as obvious as possible. The show is very on-the-nose with its themes, to the point where it feels like it stapled them onto a plank of wood and smashes the audience in the face with it, but I actually kind of liked this too. I've never seen a feminist deconstruction of Faust, and I give it points for originality.
Characterwise, I was pleasantly surprised to see so much of the cast made up of veteran British comedy actors. They seem to be in a secret contest with one another to provide the hammiest possible performance, and I found it a joy to watch Michelle Gomez eviscerate the scenery.
As for things I was less fond of, for whatever reason the show has this obnoxious vignette effect on screen the entire time. Anything that isn't in the centre of the picture is out of focus, and it gets really irritating after a while. Also, despite only being 10 episodes long, it still manages to throw in some monster-of-the-week episodes to pad out the story. Once you've had Satan turn up in episode 2, any other monster coming along is going to feel second rate, and that's assuming they don't look like shit. These ones do.
Sabrina is a recommended watch. A novel show that includes loads of cliches (like including trio of bitchy, highschool bully girls), only to do some creative things with them. I'm still disappointed the cat doesn't talk, but maybe they will fix that for season 2.
Series Booooo OOOOO Ooooo!
Like a lot of men my age, I've never read a single Sabrina or Archie comic, and my sole exposure to the franchise was a 90s tv series about a sub-urban witch and her talking cat. The new Sabrina doesn't have a talking cat. Worst adaptation ever.
The first thing that strikes me about Sabrina is its tone. There is some of that Riverdale dark and edgy I don't normally like, but Sabrina manages to offset it by also having lots of utterly goofy and silly moments that look straight out of a Buffy. But then it manages to temper that in turn by throwing in lots of way darker and more violent stuff than a lot of modern horror movies. It's all kinds of things at once and Sabrina makes these conflicting tones fit really well together. Aesthetically, it's set in both the 70s and modern day at the same time, but it never really screams out to you as being out of place; again it gets that balance right.
The plot of Sabrina is that she is a half witch, coming up to her 16th Birthday. According to tradition, she is expected to sell her soul to Satan - here, a giant Bahomet goat monster - to become a fully fledged Witch. Sabrina isn't sold on the idea though, being both a teenager with human friends, and also a third-wave feminist. Seriously, I'm not simplifying that there for comic effect. Sabrina's main characteristic is that she wants to smash the patriarchy. She even forms a feminist society called "WICCA", just to make the witchcraft as female empowerment allegory as obvious as possible. The show is very on-the-nose with its themes, to the point where it feels like it stapled them onto a plank of wood and smashes the audience in the face with it, but I actually kind of liked this too. I've never seen a feminist deconstruction of Faust, and I give it points for originality.
Characterwise, I was pleasantly surprised to see so much of the cast made up of veteran British comedy actors. They seem to be in a secret contest with one another to provide the hammiest possible performance, and I found it a joy to watch Michelle Gomez
eviscerate the scenery.
As for things I was less fond of, for whatever reason the show has this obnoxious vignette effect on screen the entire time. Anything that isn't in the centre of the picture is out of focus, and it gets really irritating after a while. Also, despite only being 10 episodes long, it still manages to throw in some monster-of-the-week episodes to pad out the story. Once you've had Satan turn up in episode 2, any other monster coming along is going to feel second rate, and that's assuming they don't look like shit. These ones do.
Sabrina is a recommended watch. A novel show that includes loads of cliches (like including trio of bitchy, highschool bully girls), only to do some creative things with them. I'm still disappointed the cat doesn't talk, but maybe they will fix that for season 2.