The Addams Family
The Addams Family was a staple of 1960s television, then later of 90s films. With a number of TV movies and a cartoon show under the belts, it’s amazing that no one has tried to properly bring back the live action show.
For those who don’t know, the series focuses on the lives of a weird family living in suburban America. Their penchant for stealing road signs, exploding trains, and consuming poisons for tea makes them terrifying to their neighbors, but they’re also lovely (if slightly deranged) people with a strong sense of family. Gomez and Morticia are role models for a happy marriage and good parents to Pugsley and Wednesday, while the extended family of Uncle Fester and Grandmama, plus butler Lurch, add some gunpowder to the fire.
Many shows enjoy puncturing suburbia nowadays, but none do it with the loving and somewhat malevolent glee that The Addams Family did. The original cartoons by Charles Addams were much darker than either the original show or the later films, so why not return to Addams’s initial vision of the strange family? TV can walk the line between darkness and comedy much more clearly – and dangerously – now, and The Addams Family is a perfect Gothic comedy.
Published: Mar 23, 2015 01:31 pm