Hey, remember Sabrina the Teenage Witch? I do. Back when I was a kid, it was one of the more successful family sitcoms on ABC's TGIF lineup. I honestly do not remember if it was actually any good because I wasn't much of a critical thinker when I was like... nine. But it was about a teenage girl who was also a witch, raised by her aunts, with a wise-cracking black cat named Salem and a boyfriend and best friend at school from whom she had to keep her magical life a secret.
It was pretty low-key and kooky in a very family-friendly 90s sitcom manner, as I recall.
The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina are not like that.
Based on the same Archie comic title, this show is, like Riverdale before it (there's no way this would exist without Riverdale,) following the direction that the comics took and examining the story in a far darker manner.
In this version of Sabrina, the whole "witch" thing is way more fire and brimstone than Harry Potter. Her aunts, her live-in cousin (who has apparently been under house arrest for the last 75 years yet looks like he's either in his 20s or 30s) and the members of the religion for which her late father was the high priest is a straight up satanic coven, its members all adherents to the devil, as in the actual fallen angel lord of hell. The early episodes deal with her awaiting her "Dark Baptism" (her sixteenth birthday, which happens to be on Halloween during a blood moon eclipse.)
(Pedantic aside - it does frustrate me a little, as someone who took a semester of Irish gaelic, that one of the coven members refers to Halloween as Samhain but pronounces it "sam-hen" instead of "sah-wen," which is how it's actually pronounced.)
Much as I gather Riverdale does, the show plays with time period. From the cars and clothing, it seems like it's in the 50s or 60s, but then you see a person using a laptop and characters discussing a 1970 Toni Morrison novel as a "classic." It's a stylized world, and I think we're just meant to roll with it.
Ultimately, the show so far (I'm three episodes in) does largely play with the idea of the teenage identity crisis, and particularly how young people are expected to make commitments they aren't informed or mature enough to make. On top of it we see the theme of oppressive patriarchy that the devil claims to free people from - though the more one spends actually looking at it, the more the devil seems like the ultimate exploitative patriarch.
The show (and I gather the recent incarnation of the comics before it) play an interesting game with the "dark is not evil" trope, giving Sabrina some loving family members (at least Cousin Ambrose and Aunt Hilda - Aunt Zelda's going to need to prove herself) who are nevertheless part of this coven, praising Satan and all that.
The supernatural world seems to be almost entirely populated by people on the devil side of things - even a mortal lawyer with experience in witch law named Daniel Webster (the show is not what you'd call subtle) is only in such a position thanks to past demonic interactions. We do have a mystery about a possible witch hunter who has killed some local warlock, but that story feels disconnected from the main plot so far - which is whether Sabrina can have her cake but eat it to, retaining and expanding her powers without, you know, giving her soul to Satan.
The show has style up the wazoo, which I think counts for a lot, and the comfort the show has with going dark is pretty fun. For these first few episodes, Kieran Shipka does a great job radiating charisma and making us like this version of Sabrina, even if the story doesn't give her a ton of agency to begin with (which, to be fair, is part of the point.) As often happens with stories like these, the mundane stuff with her mortal friends who aren't in the know sometime struggles to feel relevant. Her friends at school really feel like Supporting Characters (capitalization intended.) Harvey, much as he did on the sitcom, is mostly just kind of dopily likable but if his simplicity is his main appeal, the show hasn't really explored that much. Mind you, I don't need high school drama in this high school drama, but their relationship starts the series as shockingly secure and supportive for a couple of sophomores.
Still, it's a bit of a trip to see these characters rendered in such a darker world. Some might find the cinematography - particularly an effect in which the edges of the screen are blurred - distracting, but so far I'm enjoying it as a bold choice. As a fantasy nerd, I will say that I'm not very enamored of God/Devil dichotomies in world-building, though I think it works a little better here than it did in, say, Sleepy Hollow (I got so excited in the end of the first season when the spell they cast used the most famous quote from the - fictional, but canon-straddling - Necronomicon, thinking the cosmos of the show was going to get more complex and interesting.)
