'Bewitched' Is Television's New Fetch

By Dustin Rowles | TV | March 7, 2024 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | March 7, 2024 |

While AMC renewed the limp Mayfair Witches last year, NBC is going in another direction with their forthcoming witch series, Something Wicked. Inspired by the classic sitcom Bewitched, the comedy will “examine the condition of modern adult womanhood and how even with witchcraft, balancing everything is impossible.”

June Diane Raphael, who has probably had a guest role in every other half-hour sitcom over the last 125 years, has been cast as the lead, and it comes from Dickinson creator Alena Smith. It’s being developed as a multi-cam comedy, which is what NBC is doing these days with all their comedies (Night Court, Extended Family).

It’s not the only Bewitched iteration in the works. Judalina Neira (The Boys, Daisy Jones and the Six) is developing an “irreverent” hour-long version of the series for Sony, which will be shopped to the streamers. Hers is being called a “reimagining,” and is expected to be darker, in the same vein as Peacock’s Fresh Prince reboot, which is not particularly dark.

It’s not the first stab at bringing back Bewitch for television. CBS attempted it in 2012, NBC developed another version in 2012, and ABC and Kenya Barris tried to put another reboot together in 2018. TV is really trying to make it happen, and while I wouldn’t put the odds high on either of these attempts, June Diane Raphael feels like the perfect Samantha Stevens for this generation.