Wednesday; Platonic

“With a three-year wait between seasons, the pressure was on to match their previous success. Thankfully, Tim Burton and co have achieved this – and then some. The camp and macabre modern twist on the classic Addams Family we were promised has now won me over in spades. It’s incredibly fun and endearing, with almost all of those season one kinks ironed out.”
Tilly Pearce, The i

“Minor quibbles aside, the season opener is wonderfully skittish and dense with jokes and plot. Tim Burton’s brisk direction ensures any embryonic wibbles of seriousness or sentimentality are swiftly squished by a shot of a rotting corpse, say, or a scene in which a flotilla of CGI caterpillars assemble themselves, apropos nothing, into the legend ‘BUG OFF’. In the middle of it all, meanwhile, is Ortega’s Wednesday, whose charisma could power a thousand hearses.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“Fans of Harry Potter will love Wednesday – an old-fashioned boarding school story at heart… It’s lavishly done, as is all the cinematography. Never mind a widescreen telly, you need an Imax to do justice to this.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail

“A near three-year delay would have killed off a lesser show, but Wednesday’s murderously enjoyable second season proves worth the wait.”
Ed Power, The Telegraph

“As Wednesday, Jenna Ortega does what she does best, which is to say not very much. There is a lot of staring and glaring and seething. Your enjoyment of the script, by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, will depend on your capacity for zingy one-liners and deadpan humour. Voltaire quotes and murder puns can get a bit stale four hours in. It’s why this second season benefits greatly from a stronger family presence, with the other Addamses afforded more screen time.”
Annabel Nugent, The Independent

“The show has lanced the Addams family’s original waspish malice and repackaged Wednesday and her kooky clan as outcasts, a plucky minority battling the prejudices of the ‘normal’ world. That’s because Netflix knows that an empty, bland version of progressive politics is a guarantee of shallow popularity. A TV show about nihilism — the real essence of Addams’s Wednesday — would require a much bolder approach to commissioning.”
Susie Goldbrough, The Times

“Sometimes you can’t help wondering if Platonic would work better if its most hilarious moments were smooshed together into a lean comic movie rather than padded out into a flabby, 10-hour-long TV series. Still, there remains a lot to enjoy here.
Rachel Aroesti, The Guardian

“It makes for an honest, fractious and totally believable portrayal of a male and female friendship, built around a plot that bounces through bar business bust ups, mid-life crises.”
Keith Watson, The Telegraph

“There didn’t feel the need for ten episodes, but Platonic, for all its goofier escapades and people getting high (because it is Seth Rogen), is rather sophisticated in its exploration of relationship boundaries, of where the line falls when it comes to supporting a friend or partner in their ambitions versus putting your needs first. In short, it’s smart, funny and has more about it than your average ’will they, won’t they?’ rom-com.”
James Jackson, The Times