Witches of East End: Season 1

Remember how awful it is when an American actor tries to unsuccessfully imitate an English accent? Well here is the perfect example of where the opposite has gone completely wrong. Yes, an English actress who tries (and sometimes it doesn’t even sound like she’s trying one bit) to put on a convincing American accent. She fails every episode of course, although that alone isn’t enough to write this show off completely. Julia Ormond is the aforementioned guilty accent offender, as she ventures wildly between both dodgy American and sometimes proper posh English. She plays Joanna Beauchamp, an immensely powerful, immortal witch who is cursed with having to bury and give birth to her daughters time and time again no matter what she does to protect them. Her daughters Ingrid (Rachel Boston) and Freya (Jenna Dewan-Tatum) live until they reach the age of 30, die, then are soon reborn for Joanna to go through the painful cycle of giving birth and raising her daughters only for them to die all over again. This time, Joanna is determined to hold on to her daughters, and so keeps the magical powers a secret from her children. But it doesn’t take long for them to find out about their abilities, especially when Joanna’s fun-loving, magic-practicing sister, the girls’ aunt Wendy (Mädchen Amick) drops by for a visit. As if this wasn’t complicated enough for Joanna, it turns out she has angered a lot of bad people over the years thanks to her immortality and powers, and now one of them may be out for revenge. Before this evil can attack her beloved family, Joanna must race against the clock, identify this force, and contain the threat. It’s not just Joanna who is having a tough time though. Each daughter has soapy love-life problems to deal with. Freya, recently engaged to Dash Gardiner (Eric Winters), a dreamy doctor, couldn’t be happier, despite his mother’s (Virginia Madsen – who should have a bigger role) frank disapproval. This is until she starts having weird dreams about Killian (Daniel Di Tomasso), the estranged brother of her fiance who she’s never met. Very awkward indeed. Is there some sort of supernatural pull that is hinting at destiny? Or is Freya just really into the wild child of the two sisters? Ingrid has always been interested in pagan rituals and witchcraft in general even before the discovery of her powers, but now that she’s equipped with the knowledge that she is, in fact, a witch, it doesn’t take long for her to start experimenting. She too has a love interest, Adam (Jason Winston George), the handsome cop, although the need for secrecy surrounding her identity makes it difficult for their relationship to move forward. Witches of East End is clearly more fun when it is spending time with magic, not with individual relationship drama. Both Boston and Dewan-Tatum have enough likability and charm to carry their own plot strands, but when compared to the weight and charisma carried by Ormond (despite her horrendous, vomit-inducing accent) and the refreshingly bright and perky Amick, they cannot quite hold their own. When the four of them come together however, there is no telling what they will be able to do. Even in the most dire circumstances, the show remembers to have a lighter touch, with humour spread throughout to make up for the shortfall when it comes to delivering the dramatic goods. So far, nothing particularly eye-catching has happened, but it’s a show with potential. Given the many centuries Joanna has lived through, there will no doubt be many flashback sequences that take us to all sorts of different time periods. For those who can’t handle the madness of American Horror Story: Coven, here is another witchy show whose spell you can fall under.