Netflix’s Wednesday sets surprising Rotten Tomatoes milestone

Jenna Ortega plays the morbid teenager in Netflix’s new series

Netflix’s new Addams Family adaptation Wednesday has set an unlikely milestone on Rotten Tomatoes.

The series stars Jenna Ortega (X) as Wednesday Addams, based on the character first created by cartoonist Charles Addams.

Wednesday is the latest in a long line of Addams Family adaptations, which has included multiple TV series, a live-action film franchise, and two recent animated films.

Alongside Ortega, Luiz Guzmán plays Gomez Addams and Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Morticia. Christina Ricci, who played Wednesday in the 1990s film adaptations, also features as one of Wednesday’s teachers.

The series has received mixed reviews, with The Independent’s Nick Hilton describing it as “rather lacking in quality” in a two-star write-up.

“From writing that sounds like it’s been reverse engineered through Google Translate to a deeply confusing central mystery, the world that series creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar have built is gossamer thin,” he wrote.

However, other reviews have been more positive, with the series earning a “fresh” critics’ score of 71 per cent on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes.

More than this, the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes is even more roundly positive, with the series clocking an impressive 86 per cent positive reviews.

Surprisingly, this makes it the highest-scored Addams Family adaptation since the original 1960s TV series (which the website claims has a score of 100 per cent positive reviews).

Jenna Ortega in ‘Wednesday' (COURTESY OF NETFLIX)

It ranks considerably higher than 1991’s The Addams Family (which scored 67 and 66 respectively) and 1993’s Addams Family Values (which scored 74 per cent positive with critics, but just 63 with audiences), the latter of which is now often described as a cult classic.

Wednesday also ranks far higher than the critically lambasted Addams Family Reunion (1998), as well as both of the recent animated films.

While Ortega’s lead performance has been praised by viewers, special attention has been lavished on the casting of Uncle Fester.

Wednesday is available to stream on Netflix now.