An original spell
Bewitched is one of television's few wholly original creations: a premise with no source novel, no stage version, no prior IP. The ABC sitcom premiered in September 1964, conceived by Sol Saks, and the setup was simple and pointed. Samantha Stephens, a witch with genuine power, chooses to marry an ordinary mortal advertising man and agrees to live as a normal housewife in suburban Connecticut. What followed over eight seasons was a comic tension between conformity and magic, between what Samantha was expected to suppress and what she actually was.
The show ran until 1972, cycling through two actors in the role of husband Darrin (Dick York, then Dick Sargent), and it left behind a durable mythology. It has been remade, transplanted to Japan, adapted into film, revisited in documentary form, and paid oblique tribute by shows that understand its real subject: the cost of hiding who you are. The premise carries because that subject is universal and the writers never resolved it. Samantha wins every confrontation but concedes the war, episode after episode, and the comedy lives in that gap.
Every Version of Bewitched
The original series, its nearest companion, and the Hollywood remake
Bewitched Through the Decades
- 1964Original ABC series premieres Bewitched
- 1965I Dream of Jeannie debuts, the sitcom's closest companion and rival I Dream of Jeannie
- 1972Original series ends after 254 episodes
- 1977Spin-off Tabitha, following Samantha's daughter, runs one season
- 1978Japanese anime Majokko Tickle draws on the Bewitched formula
- 2004Japanese live-action remake airs on Fuji TV
- 2005Hollywood feature film remake starring Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell Bewitched
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If you love Bewitched: witches on screen and on the page
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The definitive version: eight seasons, no equal
The original 1964 ABC series is the only version that functions as a complete artistic object. Elizabeth Montgomery brought warmth, comic precision, and genuine ambiguity to Samantha: the character is powerful enough to undo any problem instantly, yet consistently chooses restraint. That restraint is the whole show. The first five seasons with Dick York as Darrin are the peak, finding a real comic rhythm between Montgomery and Agnes Moorehead as Endora that no remake has approached. The later Sargent seasons are looser and more surreal, but the Montgomery-Moorehead axis holds even those together.
The underrated one: WandaVision understood what Bewitched was really about
WandaVision (2021) is the most intelligent engagement with the Bewitched formula produced since the original. Its opening episodes are a direct homage, leaning into the same black-and-white domestic sitcom aesthetic, and the show earns that homage by understanding what the premise is actually doing. Bewitched is a grief mechanism: a woman bending reality to sustain a life that feels perpetually at risk of exposure and collapse. WandaVision makes that subtext the text, and in doing so gives the original series a retroactive depth it was rarely awarded at the time.
The one to skip: the 2005 film lost the thread
The 2005 Nora Ephron film starring Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell attempts a meta layer: a real witch is cast to play a witch in a new TV remake of Bewitched, a concept that cannibalizes itself before the first act is finished. The film abandons the premise halfway through, falls back on broad physical comedy, and wastes Kidman completely. It is not worthless, but it is a clear demonstration that the original's appeal was rooted in television pacing and Montgomery's specific mode of understatement. Neither translates to ninety minutes of studio comedy.