New trailer for WGN’s “Salem”

A new trailer debuted today for the new series about Salem witches to be broadcast on WGN. The series is not debuting for a while yet, but the network is definitely trying to get some advance buzz happening, and the social media campaign to promote the show has been going strong for weeks now. Because witches!

Earlier publicity stills from the show showed “dunking stool” scenes, which is kind of annoying since, as any history buff knows, the dunking stool did not exist in Colonial North America, but was a torture device used during the European witch craze. While we’re on the subject, no witches were burned at Salem, either (I tweeted this to a blogger who mistakenly used the words “burning” in a headline about this show and he fixed it, which was gratifying).

I admit I do think the look of the show is fairly nice, from the stills I have seen so far: good costume design, authentic sets, not too stagey or theatrical looking as some poorly-rendered “historical” shows can be. I think overall the production design looks great (well, except maybe the swamp settings;  remind me, why are they filming in Shreveport, Louisiana again? Maybe they’re hanging out at Fangtasia after a tough day of shooting?), and the cast looks pretty solid too. Maybe this will turn out to be an interesting fantastical twist on the Salem story…and then of course, we’ll also have Jenji Kohan’s new HBO series to compare it to!