‘Charmed’: First Reviews of the CW Reboot Are In

Before Charmed debuted on The CW Sunday night, reviews for the show came out and were mixed. The series is a reboot of the original 1998-2006 supernatural series.

The new show features an entirely new cast of characters, but takes inspiration from the original world created by Constance M. Burge. Madeleine Mantock, Melonie Diaz and Sarah Jeffery star as the main trio of Charmed Ones, who are battling a brand new Source of All Evil. Rupert Evans stars as Harry Greenowod, their guardian Whitelighter. The main cast also includes Ser’Darius Blain, Ellen Tamaki and Nick Hargrove.

In a review from ComicBook.com, the plot is a “mixed bag,” while Mantock “arguably the most likable of all three characters in the pilot.”

“Charmed is a series that is off to an ambitious, if clumsy, start, and it’s fun to watch,” Burlingame wrote. “The performances are uniformly solid, but there is a weird mix of effects that are legitimately good and effects that feel like they could have come right out of the original series — which was a low-budget show from a decade-plus ago.”

Entertainment Weekly‘s Kristen Baldwin gave the show a B-grade and noted that the first episode leans heavily into the #MeToo movement.

“Surely the new Charmed — which speaks to younger viewers in a language they’ll appreciate while honoring the original’s themes of sisterhood and female empowerment — can coexist peacefully with the old Charmed. The only things I really miss are the alt-rock theme song and those bad ’90s bobs,” Baldwin wrote.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Daniel Fienberg argued that the show is not as “magical or exciting” as it could be.

“What I can say is that The CW’s Charmed is a remake with a very clear perspective that puts it in the middle of conversations about the #MeToo moment. It’s an unabashedly feminist witching allegory that gets an extra shiver of recognition from the recent Kavanaugh circus and feels prepared to engage, possibly in a clever way, in a conversation that’s worth having, especially for young women,” Fienberg wrote.

“In many ways, the new version of the witchy show is a bastardization, a new series slapped with a familiar title to draw in fans before rudely disappointing them,” USA Today‘s Kelly Lawler wrote. “There are just enough hints of the old one blended in that it’s hard to think of it as an entirely new show.”

New episodes of Charmed air on The CW Sundays at 9 p.m. ET.

Photo credit: The CW