At first glance, this was not exactly screaming “next must-watch.” But I needed something on in the background that I didn’t have to really pay attention to, so I pressed play. Once the show gets going, it gets surprisingly dramatic.
We’re talking betrayals, plotting, scheming and villains. Basically, everything you need for a show that starts as background noise and somehow turns into, “Wait, what did they just do?”
There are also appearances from Howie Mandel, Wayne Brady and Nick Cannon, along with some of the original 1971 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory actors.
Now, I’m not saying this is the best show I’ve ever watched. In fact, critics have been particularly brutal. The series finished its first season with an 11 percent critics’ score and a 34 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing, giving it the lowest audience score among the major Willy Wonka adaptations.
