La famiglia Addams

The Addams Family always has been one of my favourites. The costumes and sets look sumptuous and the photography to me hasn't dated. The music was iconic when I first was familiar to the series and it still is. The stories are always interesting, and I have never found the laughter track inappropriate or annoying. The cast are superb and perfectly suited to their characters, you won't find a better Gomez or Morticia than John Astin and Carolyn Jones, and Jackie Coogan is born for Fester. Wednesday and Pugsley are adorable and genuinely look as though they care for one another, and Lurch is a character you are amused by and feel sympathy for. The humour also works wonderfully, the writing is superb and the slapstick is subtle and appropriately weird and surreal. All in all, this series is a classic and always will be. 10/10 Bethany Cox

John Astin and Carolyn Jones brought the Charles Addams cartoons to life in this excellent counter-cultural '60s show. They each brought their own qualities to the characters, Astin his Zen Yogi Buddhism and his Shakespeare, Jones, her knitting and great looks. If you pay attention to the dialogue it's subversive on many levels which may be why ABC cancelled it after 2 years of great success.

Carolyn Jones is gothically georgeous with a great sing-songy voice that brings the dialogue to life, and a figure perfect enough to fit into that black widow dress. I always love how she says "Mail's In...Thank You Thing" when the foghorn sounds. Lurch is great when he moans all the time, and Fester with his gun "I'll shoot 'im in the back!".

I think the most poignant episode was when Rocky, a biker beatnik comes and the Addams' accept him as he is and teach his staunch father a lesson. His father tells them, "If there's a kook here, it's probably me". And at the end after everyone says "right", Morticia says, "reet"...a subtle message that she learned to be different from Rocky.

This hinted at the explosion of youth rebellion that was to come...and this series may have precipitated it on some level. The '60s had counter-culture all of a sudden injected into popular culture and it had an impact on the development of the actual counter culture of the late 60s...and even present day the "gothic" look can be traced directly to here.

Another memorable thing is Cousin Itt's tiny room everyone else had to crouch in and they hit their heads on the ceiling (now you know what Being John Malkovich was a rip-off of). And the moonbathing is great. But most important is the sexual chemistry between Morticia and Gomez: "Querida, that's French!" as he kisses his way up her arm. They never fought and prompted a psychologist to comment, "This is the healthiest show on TV". I myself grew up in an abusive disfunctional environment like many Americans, and this show was one of my respites as a kid because I knew Gomez and Morticia would never get mad at me or each other.

This show carried that je-ne-sais-quoi that a lot of '60s culture did, and there's nothing today that even comes close. There were alot of subtle things in the script you had to look for, like when Lurch always has whatever is requested on hand, Gomez' numerous Shakespeare references, and how they have to turn off the cave echo with a switch.

I finally saw the Addams' Family movie and it doesn't measure up to the original in any way. If you've never seen this show, you're in for some first class high level satire and memorable characters. Carolyn Jones' epitaph reads, "She gave joy to the world"...that cannot be denied.

'The Addams Family' was one of my favourite TV shows growing up because of it's overall weirdness, which appealed to my sick sensibilities having been raised on a diet of Mad magazine and Hammer horror movies, and because it was genuinely funny. And all these years later it still is. As an adult I appreciate it on even more levels. With hindsight it manages to look like one of the most subversive shows ever shown on TV, while simultaneously showing one of the most loving, and well adjusted families in TV history! How ironic is that?

John Astin as Gomez Addams shows outstanding comic flair, and is still a delight to watch. (Try and track down the ahead of its time comic western 'Evil Roy Slade' for another wonderful Astin performance.) The chemistry between Astin and on-screen wife Morticia (the lovely Carolyn Jones) is smoldering AND hilarious, and the two are backed up by a fine supporting cast, especially former child star Jackie Coogan as the bizarre but lovable Uncle Fester.

Forget the hit and miss movies, these are the original and still the best Addams family. Wonderful fun!

The Addams Family was, in its own strange way, the healthiest TV family ever presented. The mother and father are utterly smitten with one another. They dote on their children and pay meticulous attention to their upbringing. The children, for their part, are respectful of their elders but brim-full of curiosity and mischief. The grandmother and uncle are loved and respected. Extended family members are admired and included. The butler shows great devotion to his employers, who repay him by providing a loving family. Thing (whatever it is) is appreciated for his omnipresent helpfulness. And visitors are always welcome and treated with the utmost courtesy.

The macabre touches are fun, and provide the fish-out-of-water running gag of outsiders trying to cope with the Addams' ghoulish world, but it's the relationships that make The Addams Family tick. Current sit-coms, with their focus on deception and underhanded tricks, would do well to emulate the Addamses.

The Addams Family comes from a very cultured place: the nimble mind and pen of Charles Addams, a cartoonist whose work appeared in the entertainingly droll "The New Yorker" magazine. Charles' "family" were a macabre and quaint set of well to do people who just happened to take pleasure in pain and who dressed in dark colors. This means that the cartoonist was the unofficial Grandaddy of Goth! When the concept of converting these ink doodles into a live action television program took place, the timing coincided with another "odd" family who also arrived on our Television doorsteps that same season: "The Munsters." In a way, that was a disservice to both programs, since the common traits they shared made them a constant comparison. Personally, though I don't believe they are in the same league.

Where "The Munsters" went for the slapstick schtick nearly every time, "The Addams Family" used more wordplay and more clever, witty attempts to bring a laugh. But even that wasn't the main difference between the programs.

The secret ingredient that The Addams Family had over their Mockingbird Lane counterparts was a single word: PASSION. Yes this was a family with a creepy home, kooky hobbies, mysterious eating habits, and spooky pets. But at the root, at the heart, at the altogether ooky core of the story was this one, great, huge love between Gomez and Morticia and the love they shared for all of the people in their lives. John Astin and Carolyn Jones were incredible, and for my money, are still the sexiest couple in TV history.

Though it was often played for laughs, as when the matriarch uttered a word in French and Gomez couldn't resist kissing up her arm, it was very palpable, in the pet names they called each other, in the way they tangoed or in how the pair chatted in each other's company. This was a family that cared about all of its members deeply, and that read as clear as a full moon over a cemetery.

The laughs of the program were just the spider on the web, and the laughs were plentiful and great. A stellar cast, very good special effects and smart story lines, plus a great set of music cues from Vic Mizzy that added just the right finish to a fantastic program. Next time you have a chance to view an episode, keep that love story in mind as the show's centerpiece and see if you don't appreciate it in a new and deeper way.