Television series

The Addams Family

Name: The Addams Family
Genre: Comedy, Family, Horror
Released: 1964
Cast: John Astin, Ted Cassidy, Carolyn Jones, Jackie Coogan, Blossom Rock

The Addams Family is deadpan gothic sitcom comfort food: an impeccably polite clan of ghouls who adore each other, their bat-shaped chandelier, and anyone who wanders too close to their cobwebbed mansion. John Astin's manic joy and Carolyn Jones's serene menace anchor episodic 60s plots where the 'normal' neighbours are the real freaks. Gentle, funny, oddly wholesome — spookiness without a single moment of real dread.

TVMaze rating

8.2

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The Munsters1964

Airing the same year as Addams, this is the other side of the same coin — a family of classic movie monsters trying to fit into suburbia, with even broader slapstick and a lovable oaf at its centre.

But The jokes lean broader and the pacing is slower; if you liked Addams's dry wit, this can feel like a louder cousin.

Beetlejuice1988

Tim Burton's manic, candy-colored ghost comedy has the same delight in the macabre and the same gentle satire of suburban blandness, but cranks the visual anarchy and Michael Keaton's chaos up to eleven.

But It's noisier and stranger than the sitcom's cozy rhythms — more fever dream than family hangout.

Wednesday2022

A direct descendant that swaps sitcom warmth for teen mystery and Tim Burton's visual flair, letting the family's most iconic daughter carry a whole modern show on her own dry, murderous charisma.

But It's a very different genre — boarding-school mystery with real stakes — and the rest of the family barely appears.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Grey Gardens1976

Big Edie and Little Edie are the real-world Addamses — an aristocratic mother and daughter living in genteel decay, utterly unbothered that the world finds them bizarre, exactly the unselfconscious eccentricity the sitcom plays for laughs.

This documentary about two real reclusive socialites rotting gracefully in a crumbling East Hampton mansion is funnier, sadder and stranger than any scripted family could be, and just as impossible to look away from.

But There's real sadness and decline under the eccentricity; it isn't played for comfort, and some viewers find it exploitative rather than charming.

A Series of Unfortunate Events2017

Neil Patrick Harris leads this gorgeously stylised, deadpan-narrated tale of children navigating a world of absurd cruelty and gothic set design — the same fondness for the macabre played with real narrative bite.

But It's bleaker underneath the jokes; the misfortune feels relentless rather than affectionate.

Pushing Daisies2007

A whimsical, candy-bright murder-mystery comedy about a man who can raise the dead with a touch — the same fairy-tale embrace of death as something sweet rather than scary.

But It's a full hour-long romance-mystery hybrid, so the tone drifts further from pure sitcom silliness.

Bewitched1964

The other great 60s supernatural sitcom, built around a witch trying to live an ordinary suburban life — same era, same gentle inversion of who's really the odd one out.

But It's much tamer and more conventional, with none of the Addamses' cheerful embrace of the macabre.

The Umbrella Academy2019

A modern, superpowered dysfunctional family dramedy that's just as weird and clannish, trading vaudeville for apocalyptic stakes while keeping the sibling bickering and deadpan humor intact.

But It's darker, more violent, and far more plot-heavy than anything the Addamses ever got up to.

Coraline2009

Stop-motion gothic wonder that shares the Addamses' delight in the uncanny domestic — a house full of small horrors treated with the same matter-of-fact charm.

But It's genuinely creepier and aimed more at kids with a taste for nightmares than adults wanting comfort viewing.

Sabrina the Teenage Witch1996

Lighter, sillier, and aimed at teens, but it keeps the same core joke — ordinary suburban life colliding with the supernatural, played for warmth rather than scares.

But It's far tamer '90s sitcom fare, with little of the gothic atmosphere or dry wit.

Arsenic and Old Lace1944

Cary Grant's frantic straight man walks into a house of sweet old aunts who murder lonely gentlemen as a kindness — the same cheerful, unbothered relationship to death that makes the Addamses so lovable, two decades earlier.

A screwball black comedy from the golden age of Hollywood where murder is treated as a minor domestic inconvenience by two sweet old aunts — proof the Addamses' gallows humor has deep roots.

But The pace and style are pure 1940s stage-farce; if you want atmosphere over dialogue, this will feel talky and old-fashioned.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show1975

Same engine — a household of gleeful outsiders who find ordinary visitors far stranger than themselves — but dialed up into glam-rock camp horror instead of family sitcom, with musical numbers instead of one-liners.

A midnight-movie institution where a houseful of exuberant weirdos corrupt a nice young couple, played with a wink, sequins, and total commitment to the bit.

But It's raunchier, campier and far more explicit than anything the Addamses would ever get up to on ABC.