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Bewitched: another day, another reboot?

America looks to a new twist on a classic sitcom.

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Here we are again, at reboot central, as America mulls the latest nostalgic show it wants to revive.

This time it’s classic sitcom Bewitched, with plans to give it an African-American twist under Black-ish creator Kenya Barris.

Deadline reports just before he departed ABC Studios for a Netflix deal, Barris and writer / producer Yamara Taylor developed a vision for the show as single camera, interracial blended family comedy.

The concept sees a hardworking black single mother who happens to be a witch, marry Darren, a white mortal who happens to be a bit of a slacker. They struggle to navigate their differences as she discovers that even when a black girl is literally magic, she’s still not as powerful as a decently tall white man with a full head of hair in America.

ABC (US) has now given a pilot production commitment to the new take.

The original Bewitched aired from 1964-1972, and has been the subject of two previous attempts to revive it over the past decade. One in 2011 and another in 2014.

A 2005 film starred Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell.

Good luck improving on the fierce talents of one Elizabeth Montgomery…

16 Responses

  1. That premise, wow. Check’s Poe’s law…
    The original show was about the husband trying to succeed despite his wife’s abilities. You watched the original show annoyed Darren wouldn’t use his wife’s magic to suceed. So this is a show where he succeeds despite her magic and she fails? Race trumps magic?

    It would be a much more interesting re-imagining if it was just a black family. Have the wife be from Africa and marrying an African American guy. She’s got African magic and just do a clash with that. He’s lost touch with his heritage ect.

  2. How is that Bewitched other than it being a witch married to a mortal? Seems like yet another show trying to cash in by connecting to an old show instead of just being an original show/idea? Why can’t people just design shows without connecting them to other shows unless they really are remaking them?

    In saying that I like witch shows, I liked Bewitched, so I’d probably check this out

    1. I guess even if they decided to tie back to the two films that came before and inspired Bewitched in I Married A Witch (1942) or Bell, Book and Candle (1958) people would still think Bewitched.

      I Married A Witch could have had the best story to tie into, as in that the Male Darrin type character is a descendant of people who executed witches at the Salem witch trials, the Witch character plans to torment him (as his forebearers were) however she ends up falling in love with him. So I could see that playing out in this type of mixed marriage story, as it could be that he was a descendant of slave owners and the witches had cursed his forebearers over the years.

  3. ‘The concept sees a hardworking black single mother …’

    So pretty much absolutely nothing to do with the original series, so why call it Bewitched? Ah yes, a cynical attempt to cash in on past glory.

  5. Interesting route to take as Bewitched often had a political/social twist to it. Which in relation to this reboot had an episode where Tabitha was playing with an African American friend and a client of Darrin’s came to the door. Tabitha answered with her friend and the client asks Darrin be removed from his account as he thought Darrin was in a mixed marriage. When he sees he was wrong he tells Larry Darrin can handle his account and Larry tells the client he doesn’t want him and to leave as he doesn’t want a racist client (Season 7: Ep 13 Sisters at Heart).

    Many other episodes that tackled stuff like that of the day as well.

      1. It’s a good episode that gets the balance right without taking it away from what Bewitched was, there a few in a similar vein. One where Aunt Clara accidentally brings Benjamin Franklin to modern times and he gets arrested at a peaceful protest, to which he wonders what happened to the America he envisioned where peaceful gatherings were allowed.

  6. Even though younger viewers may not know much about Bewitched it does hold a place of affection for TV watchers of the 60’s and 70’s, it was along with I Dream of Jeannie and Hogan’s Heroes a comedy classic of it’s era, and there is the dilemma, it is very much a production of the sixties so I would suggest that even if the show is re-imagined it will not come anywhere close to the original.

    1. The Sabrina reboot is not based on the Sabrina the teenage witch tv show but on a comic book series called The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. If they made the reboot a comedy like the original tv show was it would be way too cheesy today.

      1. Yep and the comic is set in alternate reality as it spun out of the Afterlife with Archie series of comics number 6 of that to be exact which centred on Sabrina and got a really positive reception from comic buyers.

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