The Addams Family has taken many forms since it was first introduced to the world by cartoonist Charles Addams in a 1938 New Yorker comic strip: a live-action television series, an animated series, several films, a Broadway musical, and lastly, a video game series. The latest retelling, Wednesday, from creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (Smallville) and executive producer Tim Burton (Beetlejuice) — pictured here alongside his stars — recalls Addams’s original depiction, particularly when it comes to parental pillars Gomez and Morticia and their relationship to the macabre, pigtail braid-wearing title character.

“We were going back to the drawings,” says Burton, who also directs four episodes of the first season. “[Gomez and Morticia] are a beautifully mismatched couple that are in love. That’s what I love about it. You see this image of Catherine and Luis together, and now you get why Wednesday is like Wednesday. It has to do with the parents.” Catherine Zeta-Jones takes on the role of Addams matriarch Morticia, serving haute vampire glamor, with pinstripe suit-wearing husband Gomez, played by veteran character actor Luis Guzmán, adoringly by her side. After Wednesday (Jenny Ortega) is expelled yet again, this time for setting piranhas on the water polo team after they bully the youngest Addams, Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez), her parents delightedly ship her off to their alma mater, Nevermore Academy, where all is not what it seems.