Dear Gossips,

It’s the Friday before Halloween, All Hallow’s Eve Eve, so in the spirit of the closing of spooky season but also Friday Funday, here’s a recommendation for you: Abigail’s Divine Comedy from Joe Hegyes, a short-form web series that reimagines The Crucible in the style of a teen comedy.

Check out the trailer:

Don’t let the vertical video fool you, though, Abigail’s Divine Comedy is not a “vertical”, as in the new genre of entertainment made and formatted for smartphones. ADC is available in standard formatting, it’s just gone viral on TikTok and Instagram over the last couple of months. It is a proper web series, a short-form comedy, and it is f-cking HILARIOUS.

And, conveniently, season one is coming in its entirety to Youtube—if you, like me, want to watch it on a bigger screen than a phone—tonight (October 30) at 8 PM ET. All episodes run about 40 minutes, so it’s not a huge time commitment, either. It’s the perfect pre-Halloween pre-game, to get you in a spooky-kooky mood.

Hegyes spoke to USA Today about the web series and the popularity of his “Gen Z Abigail Williams” character, which he’s been doing online since 2020. In the spirit of “this is not a vertical”, Hegyes is hoping Abigail’s Divine Comedy might lead to a traditional TV deal, as The Misadventures of an Awkward Black Girl led to Insecure for Issa Rae, or Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson turned the Broad City web series into a full TV series.

Were I a television executive I would be forking over cash to Hegyes right now. He wrote and directed all episodes of ADC, never mind performing dual roles in the series, so he’s a creator with big talent matched by big vision. ADC also has a charming lo-fi aesthetic that, as with Wet Hot American Summer, shows that low budget does not have to equal cheap (one thing that drives me nuts about verticals is how f-cking chintzy everything looks). I would love to see what Hegyes could do with some money to spend. Like I am REALLY hoping someone will give Joe Hegyes the money to make his Netflix-style Marie Antoinette documentary.

I cannot recommend Abigail’s Divine Comedy enough. It reminds me of Sarah’s Channel, just a straight delight all the way through, with shades of Oh Mary! for how it combines humor with a unique alternate take on historical events. Abigail’s Divine Comedy has been my go-to watch for the last two months, and now it can be yours, too. Happy Halloween!

Live long and gossip,

Sarah

Photo credits: YouTube/Joe Hegyes

Share this post