Critical Condition: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina | Netflix, from Friday

☆☆☆☆ “Just in time for Halloween, Netflix has welcomed back Sabrina Spellman (Kiernan Shipka) in a fresh take on the iconic character you might remember from ABC’s saccharine 1990s sitcom Sabrina: The Teenage Witch. Like CW’s Riverdale (Sabrina shares its creative team), this Archie Comics adaptation is darker than you’d expect. But the latest version of the teen witch – who has a ‘dark baptism’ and experiments in necromancy – is extremely welcome, if startling.” — USA Today.

☆☆☆☆ “The superb Chilling Adventures is the first version that’s an outright horror story. Showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa takes the Archie Comics milieu and gives it a dark and edgy makeover. Mad Men’s Kiernan Shipka is a truly fearsome teen, trapped in the interzone between high school and the netherworld. This time, instead of tangling with Britney or N’Sync, she’s taking on her devil-worshipping coven and its misogynistic satanic patriarch.” — Rolling Stone.

☆☆☆☆ “After five episodes of foundation-laying that could, if I’m being generous, have been dispatched in two, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina finally kicks into gear. There’s a narrative momentum to the season’s end that has me looking forward to a much more fully realised, and already ordered, second season, but in a TV world in which ‘Trust me, it gets better’ are the most damning words a critic can utter, how ridiculous is it to be urging this much patience with a show called Chilling Adventures of Sabrina?” — The Hollywood Reporter.

☆☆☆☆ “The saga’s unmistakably Potterised. Sabrina is an orphaned Mudblood, errr, half-breed who attends magic school with predatory Slytherish aristocrats. She seeks vengeance against some athlete tormentors with a honeypot scam requiring teen-girl-squad disrobing. That’s a reused old Riverdale plot — and an example of how the show balances feminist fire with deflating PG-16 provocations.” — Entertainment Weekly.

☆☆☆☆ “A stylish if juvenile supernatural thriller. I was hoping for more whimsy and wonder–and frankly chills–amid the hocus-pocus, not to mention a bit less mythological mumbo-jumbo. But by the midpoint of the 10-epsiode season, the show finds its stride.” — TV Guide.