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| Sabrina The Teenage Witch |
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| TV,
Jerry Carpenter,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F3
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This premiered on ITV in a prime Saturday evening slot almost four years ago. But the big guns of Mister Blobby blew it away and since then it’s been appearing and disappearing through the schedules like the magical miss Sabrina herself. Finally, it’s touched down on Saturday mornings sandwiched between the ear-bleeding skits on Ant and Dec’s SM tv show, so I’ve been able to catch up with it, albeit mainly through a screaming fog of a hangover.
Don’t know the plot ? – well, Sabrina (Melissa Joan Hart) finds out she’s a witch on her 16th birthday and goes to live with her two witchy Aunts and their warlock-trapped-in-the-body-of-a-cat, Salem. Pretty much every week Sabrina has to keep herself from misusing her magic skills to benefit herself – zapping her homework for better grades, getting magic fake I.D’s to sneak into clubs, that sort of stuff. There’s a lot of plot stuff involving the magic realm, where all the wacky cameo roles hang out. The series excels in giving good cameo – a wide cross-section of top poppers turn up from old faves like Blondie to your more modern goddess, the awesome Spears girl.
Sabrina follows in the time-tested sitcom stylings of classics like ‘Bewitched’ and ‘Rentaghost’ where it’s all about supernatural jollies clashing with your common and garden man in the street. Add a pinch of ‘Clueless’ and we’re there. It’s charming as hell without being particularly funny. Melissa Joan Hart plays cute in the shiny button style, side-stepping the obnoxious-trap hundred of American TV teens fall into every season.
It’s pushed into the ‘will-watch-if-I’m-there’ category because of that damn fantastic cat. Cat humour is deadly when used this effectively. It’s half real cat/half puppet cat and every time the camera shoots close to the cat puppet I crack. It’s his little pussy mouth when he starts talking – I swear it’s the funniest thing.
ITV Sat 10.30 GMT
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