Sunday, November 3, 2013

The New Witches of TV

2013 is turning into the TV Season of the the Witch.  Rarely has there been this many witches on TV at once.

American Horror Story: Coven
What's not to like about this one? Witches. New Orleans. Voodoo. Stevie Nicks music. Sounds like my kind of show.  Plus it has Jessica Lange as "The Supreme" or what would be called in one of my games, the Witch Queen.  So far the story is engrossing and I am sure there is going to be a fairly hefty body count.
The witches on this show seem to have a signature power as well as the ability to cast some spells.  There are only a handful of witches left in America (having been hunted down) so there is a sense of "us vs them" in this.  Actually given the voodoo angle it is likely to be "us vs them vs them".
ETA: Totally "us vs them vs them".

Witches of East End
This show is based on the books by Melissa de la Cruz.  This is much more campy and much more soapy.  Here the witches don't have a power each, but a signature curse.  I kinda like that to be honest, very Practical Magic about them.  It deals, much like Charmed and Practical Magic, with sisters.  I will say that this is the first time I have watched Julia Ormond in something and I liked her in it.  It also stars Mädchen Amick, who I have liked since her brief appearance on Star Trek The Next Generation back in season 2 (1988-89).
Comparisons to Charmed and Practical Magic are going to abound in this one. The house even reminds me of the Halliwell Manor home.   It is not quite as good as American Horror story, but there is fun about it.

Sleepy Hollow
Though not a witch-show per se, it does feature Katia Winter as Katrina Crane who was/is a witch.   I liked Katia Winter during her recent stint on Dexter, so her roll her is very different but gives you just enough to make me want to know more about her.  Plus I want to know how this character differs from the original Katrina Van Tassel.

Two other shows that don't presently have any witches but very likely might are the new Dracula series on NBC and the upcoming Bitten on SyFy based on the books of Kelley Armstrong. Then there is also the rumor now of Charmed coming back to TV as a reboot.  Way too early for that to be honest despite how much I enjoyed Charmed.

2 comments:

Tim Knight said...

Sleepy Hollow is one of my new favourite shows and I always enjoy American Horror Story, even though I've only seen one episode of Coven it's certainly hit the ground running.

Still waiting for Wiches Of East End to start airing over here.

Looking forward to reading your Unisystem write-ups of all these characters in the future ;)

ShadeofJeremy said...

And for the kids there's Sabrina Secrets of a Teenage Witch on the Hub Network.