The return of Wednesday Addams

And yet for diehards such as myself, Wednesday Addams is not a mere character but a way of being: our dark young queen, an outsider with the chill of the tomb. Christina Ricci, who played her in the 1990s films The Addams Family and Addams Family Values (and appeared as a botany teacher in Wednesday), delivered a masterclass of composure and malice.

While Jenna Ortega glowered successfully in skinny dark plaits, the plot was full of predictable teen drama: there were friendship storylines, even a putative romance. But anyone who knows Wednesday knows she doesn’t have friends – she has accomplices. Nor does she possess anything as mundane as hormones. None of this boded well for the second series: I was half expecting Hannah Montana in goth makeup.

As it turns out, I enjoyed these first four episodes (the final four drop next month) much more. After a summer catching a serial killer, Wednesday returns to the Nevermore Academy, her Edgar Allan Poe-themed school for teenage werewolves, vampires and sirens. Once there, she is beset by a premonition of her chirpy roommate Enid (Emma Myers) lying deceased.

The script is nicely scratchy: “I don’t like to speak ill of the dead. It’s much more fun to demonise the living.” In the first series, Catherine Zeta-Jones briefly played Wednesday’s mother, Morticia, with all the gusto of a reluctant guest at a suburban Halloween party. Here, a zestier Morticia fundraises for Nevermore, much to her daughter’s chagrin: “I liked you better when you were a crystal ball away.”

Among new characters, Steve Buscemi is the shiftily upbeat Nevermore principal, while Evie Templeton is wonderfully bizarre as Wednesday’s schoolgirl stalker. Playing Wednesday’s grandmother, Joanna Lumley has an “American” accent that careers around like an office party drunk, but she gets the tone right: hissing with sulphurous elan like an Addams-issue dowager countess.

Sometimes, Wednesday feels derivative. There are Hitchcockian birds that peck out eyes, a Bridgerton-esque orchestral reworking of REM’s Losing My Religion, and echoes of everything from Harry Potter to The Silence of the Lambs and even The Traitors. This series may feel less cynically engineered to slot neatly into the teen market, more recognisably vintage Addams. But, phenomenon though it is, it’s a show that still needs to find its own cadence.

And so to the pan fire that is MasterChef (BBC One). Both long-serving presenters have been fired. A recent report upheld 45 out of 83 sexual misconduct allegations against Gregg Wallace, while John Torode faced accusations of using racist language, including one in relation to singing along to Kanye West’s Gold Digger at an after-work gathering (Torode says he has “no recollection” of it). The BBC then decided to show the series already filmed (one contestant disagreed with the decision to broadcast it and was edited out of the final cut).

Away from the serious ethical concerns, screening MasterChef without putting Wallace and Torode centre stage sounded like a technical nightmare. Regular viewers know that the presenters appear throughout each edition, commenting and judging. Trying to cut all that out would leave behind something as flimsy and full of holes as a 60-minute primetime broadcasting doily.

I was curious to see how the scandal would be dealt with in the opener – the short answer is, it isn’t. Nothing seems to have changed. The episode runs normally, with Wallace and Torode appearing throughout. Perhaps there’s less culinary joshing along the way, a strange heaviness in the atmosphere as India Fisher’s voiceover describes gorgonzola risotto and blowtorched mackerel. When a chocolate ganache tart is produced, you’d usually expect a 10-minute soliloquy about how much Wallace loves his puddings. But not this time.

There are moments when innocent comments seem to ooze with portent, like a collapsed fondant. “It’s a big thing, isn’t it, MasterChef?” says Torode, as a stressed contestant becomes tearful. The BBC might not have edited out the sacked presenters, but there’s no doubt the format is being dismantled before our very eyes.

The two-part Channel 4 docuseries Johnny Vegas: Art, ADHD & Me is more poignant than I expect. It initially seems to be about the comic, a former art student, making a piece of public art as a “love letter” to his home town of St Helens, Merseyside.

The cameras follow Vegas (real name: Michael Pennington) through a four-year heightened psychological odyssey while creating a sculpture for the town: big dreams, funding setbacks, soul-crushing crises of self-belief.

When his original concept – a brutalist walkway – is too expensive, Vegas ends up posing in his underpants for another idea based on 3D printing. “Please don’t be disgusted by my body,” he pleads to the camera, but he doesn’t appear to be joking. Not long afterwards, a dispirited Vegas retreats from public view for more than a year, during which time he is diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

The focus of the documentary becomes how Vegas finds meaning in his art project and the St Helens community. It’s also a study of ADHD: how it can be a boon creatively (Vegas calls standup “the arena of the unwell”) but how, undiagnosed, it can wreak havoc.

Another Channel 4 documentary, Do You Have ADHD?, examines how to get a diagnosis. It’s hosted by NHS surgeon Dr Karan Rajan and Clare Bailey Mosley, a former GP and widow of the broadcaster Michael (she suspects she and her late husband both suffered from the condition). One young woman describes ADHD as a brain “swarming with bees”. Others see it as a blessing.

Diagnosis always helps, but as the documentary states, it takes years on the NHS waiting list. It makes me think of Vegas clearly overwhelmed and struggling, and of others still waiting for help. I end up thinking about that for a very long time.

Platonic

(Apple TV+)

Seth Rogan and Rose Byrne (below) return in the buddy comedy that milks their largely dysfunctional bond for belly laughs.

Parenthood

(BBC One)

A natural history series about animals protecting their offspring. Nature is shown to be fierce and deadly, but there are also fluffy lion cubs and owl chicks. David Attenborough narrates.

Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins

(Channel 4)

The latest Celebrity SAS contingent features Rebecca Loos, tearfully discussing the David Beckham affair, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK runner-up Bimini and boxer Conor Benn. The special forces training exercises are genuinely gruelling and several stars quit during the opening two episodes.

Photograph by Helen Sloan/Netflix