NBC’s Bewitched remake will be about Samantha’s granddaughter
Details are magically starting to congeal about the latest effort to bring Bewitched back to TV, with NBC recently giving The Vow writers Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein a pilot order for a new series based on the classic 1960s show. Instead of a strict reboot, the new Bewitched will focus on Daphne, granddaughter of the original series’ Samantha Stephens by way of her daughter Tabitha (who had her own TV series briefly back in the ’70s.) That’s three generations of witches operating on a single handed-down premise, in a heart-warming display of creative parsimony.
Daphne is described by Deadline as “a single twentysomething witch who has always used her magical powers to conjure herself the perfect life,” but who realizes that her powers cannot grant herself true love. Presumably, audiences will—or won’t, if the reactions to her mother’s series or the 2005 Bewitched movie, are anything to go by—watch her grow over the course of the show, learning lessons about honesty and love that are certainly as applicable to us as they are to a quasi-immortal human-witch hybrid with the ability to wish reality into her desired shape. Call it Spellfie, if you will. (Although we wouldn’t blame you if you won’t.)