Sabrina the Teenage Witch

Sabrina the Teenage Witch premiered on ABC on September 27, 1996, adapting an Archie Comics character who had existed since the 1960s and appeared in a 1970s Filmation cartoon. Melissa Joan Hart, already known from Nickelodeon's Clarissa Explains It All, played Sabrina Spellman, a girl who discovers on her 16th birthday that she's a witch — living with her aunts Hilda and Zelda (Caroline Rhea and Beth Broderick) and Salem, a warlock sentenced to a century as a talking black cat.

The show became the highest-rated series in ABC's TGIF lineup, premiering to more than 17 million viewers and leaning into broad magical comedy — spells gone wrong, the 'Other Realm,' and Salem's schemes. Hart had first played the role in a 1996 Showtime TV movie that served as the pilot, so the sitcom arrived with the character already established.

After four seasons on ABC, the series moved to The WB in 2000 for its final three seasons — aging Sabrina into college — and ended on April 24, 2003, after 163 episodes. It remains a defining TGIF-era memory, and Netflix later reimagined the character in a darker key with Chilling Adventures of Sabrina in 2018.