What I expected was a mature, gritty version of Sabrina The Teenage Witch. What I got was a very political, very Christian, horror-themed version of Sabrina that still seems targeted specifically at a teenage demographic.

Is it just me, or was the original TV series accidentally progressive for showing an alternative non-Christian lifestyle in a positive light? This new series seems to undermine the progressiveness of its source material by re-imagining this non-Christian lifestyle as explicit devil-worshipping, where witches routinely commit murder and cannibalism. Sabrina's own aunt Zelda expresses disappointment about missing out on an opportunity to eat "long-pig".

The story also seems to take a few pages from Harry Potter with Sabrina being persecuted by pure-blood witches for being half-Muggle and it even has its evil version of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It actually really feels like it is a knee-jerk reaction to the popularity of Harry Potter; a story with a protagonist whose challenge is to resist the temptation of evil witchcraft.

Finally, why do they have to refer to everything as "dark"? When Sabrina tells [spoiler]Harvey[/spoiler] about her "dark baptism", maybe it would have sounded a lot less crazy if she'd just called it a "baptism"? It's like listening to Dr Evil (from Austin Powers) explain how he got his M.D. in "evil medical school". There's absolutely no subtlety to be had here.