Six Damn Fine Degrees #143: How “Wednesday” puts the extra ‘d’ in Addams Family

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

It might somewhat seem like a bit of a short stretch from Alan’s previous piece on the long-term writing of author Douglas Adams, but here’s a chance to gush about a Netflix series that puts more than that extra ‘d’ into the famous family name: Wednesday, released late last year, puts the Addams Family daughter front and center of eight episodes and gives fresh blood to a cultural phenomenon that started over eighty years ago.

Based on Charles Addams’ cartoon stories, appearing for over fifty years in the New Yorker (1938-1988), it was the live-action series The Addams Family of the mid-‘60s that made the oddball family members a staple of American television: father Gomez (John Astin), madly in love with mother Morticia (Carolyn Jones), their children Wednesday and Pugsley, their butler Lurch, the famous disembodied hand called ‘Thing’, hairy cousin It, bald uncle Fester and a whole cast of family pets. As odd as they all seemed, they always successfully satirised American mid-century society, in which the Addams Family stood out like a sore thumb but made audiences aware that it was the puritan, conservative and bigoted people around them that they really laughed at the most.

Two animated series followed until the 1980s, but it was probably the two feature film adapations (The Addams Family, The Addams Family Values) in the early 90s that firmly put the characters back on the map for a mass audience. Raul Julia (Gomez), Anjelica Houston (Morticia), Christopher Lloyd (Fester) and Christina Ricci (Wednesday) took on the iconic roles with much gusto and for a while, new animated and live-action reboots (even a third straight-to video film) seemed to come out every few years. In recent years, two more animated films offered yet another, rather droll take on the Addams.

Now, there is Wednesday, co-produced and partly directed by no other than Tim Burton. Originally involved in his own Addams Family film and animated feature in the 2010s (both cancelled), Burton has clearly given his vision to the Netflix-produced series, his wonderful sense of the macabre and his typical look and sound (including a score by Burton regular Danny Elfman).

Rather than go through the staple of Addams Family rituals (including their gothic family mansion), Wednesday delivers something delicuously different: A boarding school-based murder mystery with the Addams family daughter at the centre. Of course, the famous family members make an entrance (Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia and Luiz Guzmàn as Gomez are delectable guest stars), but it’s Jenna Ortega disarmingly stern-faced Wedneday that truly shines. She immediately captures the malaise of her generation with her refusal to fit into the social media-dependent mainstream and the series has updated its social satire deliciously with a cast of co-students that might as well appear in other streaming high school fare (Sex Education, Hearstopper). Among them, Wednesday stands out and refuses to budge, even under the pressure of the school administration under devilish headmistress Gwendoline Christie and an ambiguous botany teacher, played by Christina Ricci.

What sets Wednesday apart from just another Addams reiteration as well is the devotion to its plot, a densely-told mystery with elements of fantasy and horror and a well-developed and dynamic guessing game as to who Wednesday can truly trust among her fellow students. The series, filmed partly on location in Romania, also dares to venture further into the gothic: Nevermore Academy, the imposing castle her family take her in the first episode, is a classic house of horror that threatens to break her willpower, but soon, Wednesday finds her own way around, assisted at first only by a droll update of ‘Thing’, devotedly supporting Wednesday in all her troubles.

Even if some hardcore fans might accuse the series and Burton of catering too much to the teenage Netflix crowd, the series’ success should be a message to all rebooters and rehashers: A good remake remains devoted to the spirit of the original, without simply imitating and mimicking. Wednesday, in my view, is more than deserving of our attention and puts more than one ‘d’ (used in words to describe in this article) into the Addams Family phenomenon.