The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” is frequently chilling, but it’s rarely much of an adventure. Netflix’s new spin on the lore of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, starring Kiernan Shipka (“Mad Men”) as our spooky heroine, gets off to a spellbinding start, but over 10 episodes becomes more toil and trouble than it’s worth.
When we meet Sabrina Spellman, she’s carefully crossing days off her calendar, leading to the date where she’s written “16th birthday” and, just underneath that, “dark baptism.” It’s hard being a teenager these days. Or whatever days “Sabrina” is set in: The show has a ’50s retro aesthetic, from the cars to the crinoline, but modern sensibilities about feminism, gender expression and the costs of serving as Satan’s handmaid.
The Devil isn’t just in the details here; he’s everywhere, with his clomping hooves and goat head, wreaking gruesome havoc and dispatching his servants to torture and coerce Sabrina into falling in line. But Sabrina doesn’t want to submit to baptism, and she doesn’t want to sign her life over to the Dark Lord. She wants to stay in the ordinary world, alongside her doting boyfriend, Harvey (Ross Lynch), and her spunky besties, Roz (Jaz Sinclair) and Susie (Lachlan Watson). Once you enlist in Satan’s service, you can’t have silly sleepovers anymore.
Sabrina is half witch, half “mortal” — her father was a powerful warlock and her mother a regular human, and since they died, Sabrina has been raised by her witch aunts (Lucy Davis and Miranda Otto) in a musty funeral home. They’re insistent that she do right by the Spellman family name and give herself, body and soul, to the Church of Nigh
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