The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina has just arrived on Netflix bringing the Archie Comics character back to the small screen.
This time around, Mad Men star Kiernan Shipka plays the eponymous teenage witch in an altogether darker show than the version starring Melissa Joan Hart in the 1990s.
Critics have weighed in on the reboot – and it’s unanimous praise all round for the series which has been devised by Riverdale‘s Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa.
Find out what they’re saying below.
If Riverdale occasionally dips a toe into the realm of horror, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina throws itself headfirst into the murky depths of Sweetwater River, channeling the satanic movies of old to create some genuine ‘Holy s***!’ moments that you might not expect from a show like this.
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina has about a dozen different ideas of what it wants to do and be, but one thing is for certain: the show is, above all, spooky as hell. With a little more focus (both literally and figuratively), the series has as much potential as its heroine to become something great.
Beyond its uneven premiere, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina proves to be an enchanting confection brimming with pleasures supernatural and mundane, alluring and horrifying, aural and visual. In many ways, the series takes the best lessons from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is a darker show, for darker times — the optimism of the 1970s or 1990s versions would look absurd now. This is Resistance Sabrina. For the first time, our heroine has male authority figures running amok in the witch culture she’s inherited. Shipka has the gravitas to make this Sabrina the toughest yet, a violent femme who comes on like Joan of Arc crashing into a mastermix of Harry Potter and The Craft.
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is a perfect streaming series for the October season. It gets the horror. It gets the supernatural. It gets the precise lack of subtlety needed to pull off such a series. it gets it all. The show is a solid entry to the genre TV slate and one that could very well go down as the top Archie Comics adaptation to date in years to come.
Perhaps most importantly, the exceedingly talented Kiernan Shipka has the on-screen presence to become a genuine icon as the righteous and principled half-witch Sabrina Spellman. On this evidence, she more than measures up to Sarah Michelle Gellar’s ass-kicking vampire hunter.
The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is available to stream on Netflix now
