Too Much TV: THE CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA (2018 - ?)

Sabrina the Teenage Witch originally was supposed to be a character on The CW's  Riverdale series, or such was my understanding when that revisionist riff on Archie Comics was first announced. While Riverdale has gone in eccentric directions, as far as I can tell without watching it, but someone decided that incorporating the supernatual was a step too far. As a result, and probably to its benefit, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina has ended up on Netflix  Sabrina is probably better off not seeming like an adjunct to a larger story playing out elsewhere; the title character (Kiernan Shipka) is rightly at the center of this show's universe. It's a variation on the pop witch mythos that dates back at least to the 1942 film I Married a Witch, dividing humanity into witches and "mortals." Sabrina Spellman herself is a half-breed, the daughter of a powerful warlock and a "mortal" woman, both dead under vaguely mysterious circumstances. As in the comics, she's raised by her (apparently) maiden aunts, the bossy, stuck-up Zelda (Miranda Otto) and the more warmhearted Hilda (Lucy Davis), along with a cousin, Ambrose (Chance Perdomo) who's under house arrest for once conspiring to blow up the Vatican. That seems like the sort of thing that might earn a warlock merit under the usual evil = good rules of such stories, but as the series builds up steam it becomes clear that the witch establishment, represented by high priest Faustus Blackwood (Richard Coyle) is compromised and compromising, ready to sell out witches since the 1690s witch craze, which hit the show's home town of Greendale with consequences that play out in the season-one finale. Sabrina attends the normal high school, where her best friends (Jaz Sinclair, Lachlan Wilson) are misfits in different ways and also more potentially magical than their "mortal" designation suggests. As she approaches her 16th birthday, Sabrina feels pressure to undergo the witches' initiation ceremony, signing her name in blood in the Dark Lord's book and enrolling in the local witch academy, which would take her from her pals and her boyfriend Harvey Kinkle (Ross Lynch). Being a typical TV teen, Sabrina balks and rebels, and thanks to a luckily discovered Christian baptism she gets to have things both ways, attending both schools.

Her problems are not solved. Working independently of Father Blackwood and the witch establishment to push Sabrina toward the dark side is a demoness who takes the form of Mrs. Wardwell (Michelle Gomez), a feminist high school teacher who becomes Sabrina's mentor. There's some deep ambiguity if not hypocrisy at work with this character. She does much to advance the show's feminist subtext, insinuating that the male-dominated with establishment fears female power, yet her ultimate goal seems to be to render Sabrina subservient to the very male Dark Lord. This becomes only slightly less murky when Wardwell reveals herself as the Lilith of Jewish/feminist myth, aspiring to equal standing to Satan, if not still more. Her special interest in Sabrina on the Dark Lord's behalf raises questions about Sabrina's own identity and destiny that remain to be answered and provide a hook for the second season that has already been filmed.

Sabrina is one of Greg Berlanti's productions but goes relatively light on the "lies are bad" hobbyhorse that powers many of his other shows. The writers, led by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who writes a Sabrina comic book, are too busy world-building to indulge too much in teen genre-soap cliche. I think that makes the show's deeper dives into soapy sturm und drang all the more effective, more heartfelt because you're not seeing the characters going through the same contortions every single week. The writers are especially good on the family drama of the Spellman household, from the literal Cain-and-Abel dynamic of Zelda and Hilda (which borrows an idea from Alan Moore) to the sexually-frustrated Ambrose's (the show's token homosexual so far) embroilment in a slow-burning murder mystery. The best thing about the Spellman family is that their dynamics aren't set in stone; Zelda in particular proves to have more conscience and compassion than you would have guessed at first. As a whole, because the show has no monolithic vision of evil, all the characters seem more well-rounded than is usual in genre shows. Combined with Black Lightning on The CW -- I can't speak for Riverdale but Sabrina makes me more willing to give that show a chance -- this program shows that the Berlanti team is enjoying a strong second wind as its empire expands ... and I may have more evidence of that to report shortly....