Set in 17th-century Massachusetts, WGN’s first original series is based on the true story of an occult panic that swept a small Puritan province, resulting in 20 executions, most of them of poor, elderly and outcast women.
Building on the popularity of the lurid supernatural — aka ripping off “True Blood” — “Salem” takes a terrifying watershed event in the history of misogyny and asks: What if those broads really were up to something?
At the heart of this ridiculous series are secret lovers Mary Sibley (Janet Montgomery) and John Alden (Shane West, looking and talking as if he strolled over from the set of a nearby Western). When he’s conscripted for battle, she must deal with her accidental pregnancy on her own.
And whom do you call when you need an abortion? Witches, of course! As in hottie slave girl Tituba (Ashley Madekwe), whose reproductive voodoo becomes Mary’s unwitting gateway into black magic.
Tituba’s plan, with Mary as her agent: to stir up a finger-pointing devil-worship frenzy that’ll turn Puritans against one another so the witches can take over the world. Sure, this is a lazy, offensive spin on history, but is it entertaining?
Nope: It’s like watching the cast of “One Tree Hill” put on a production of “The Crucible.”