Bewitched is coming back to the small screen, but the inside word is that it is more about riding Mad Men’s coattails than making witchcraft seem appealing to a new generation. Follow the link to see the intro to the original Bewitched, which ran from 1964-1972.
Or go watch How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying to see a young Robert Morse (Japan-ophile Mr. Cooper of Mad Men) if you want the early 1960s as interpreted in the mid-1960s.
I’m open to a remake of “Bewitched” if they indeed try to do it as an early 1960s-era period piece. Perhaps add a bit more of the sartorial “witches as hep-cats” spice that the “Bell Book and Candle” movie had (sans the horribly miscast Jimmy Stewart, who seemed to have wandered in from the wrong film). What makes me worry though is that the producers of the absolutely terrible, needlessly meta, Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell vehicle are on-board.
Yes, somehow I don’t think that Bewitched needs the Nora Ephron touch.
I’d love it if they did a sort of dramedy approach to it as a period piece, but I can’t imagine Hollywood writers digging into that particular niche of 60s history…at least, not well. I’ll be more likely to watch it if it’s set in Haight-Ashbury and not a suburb, but someohow I don’t think they’d pull that off.
Did they learn nothing from the godawful Will Ferrel-Nicole Kidman debacle?
Jason, you are right to have concerns about *anyone* involved in that abomination of un-funniness that was the Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell “attempt” at Bewitched.
Abominable !