Ok, Lifetime, you have my attention. Upon first glance, the
new supernatural drama Witches of East End looks like
another tired attempt to jump on the mythological bandwagon,
but after watching the pilot, I am not ready to write it off
just yet. Lifetime, who has billed itself as, “television
for women,” is not in danger of going against type here, but
it packs a punch with stars like Julia Ormond and Madchen
Amick, as Joanna and Wendy Beauchamp; not to mention
Virginia Madsen as the snooty, above-it-all Penelope
Gardiner. Ormond and Amick play witchy sisters with long
lives behind them (and ahead of them in Joanna’s case) and
who are working together to fight off a threat from a
doppelganger bent on doing harm in Joanna’s name.
Joanna’s daughters, Ingrid and Freya, are pretty standard
Lifetime characters. Ingrid, played by Rachel Boston, is the
pretty, too-smart-for-her-own-good, analytical sister, with
a dissertation under her belt about historical witchcraft
(convenient, I know). She is the most skeptical as she
begins to discover her “powers;” something their mother has
kept secret all these years. Her love interest, Adam, is
played by the ubiquitous, Jason George, who conveniently
found time off from Mistresses, and Grey’s Anatomy to
immerse himself in an even sudsier nighttime soap. Freya,
played by Jenna Dewan Tatum, is the sexy, vixen sister, but
is more open to the strange things happening to her as she
makes Penelope choke with her mind, and spontaneously
explodes a coffee mug. She becomes involved in a steamy love
triangle with Dash (Eric Winter) and his broody brother
Killian (Daniel DiTomasso), and encounters an ex-lover
escaped from a painting, bent on revenge, all in the first
episode!
As soapy as this hour-long show is, and as female-centric as
it inevitably must be, the mythology behind the witches is
fascinating. Joanna has given birth to the same two girls
over a dozen times, but each time they die before they are
thirty. Over and over she becomes pregnant with her
daughters, often before their graves are even cold. They
lose their lives again and again, but this time she hides
their magic as a way to change their destiny. Unlike other
witch lore I’ve encountered (and trust me, I watch a lot of
other-worldly stuff), the reincarnation twist is novel and
intriguing. It is an unique twist on an (almost) played-out
genre. However, if I know Lifetime, I trust them to make it
about more than the witchcraft as the drama heats up among
the women and their respective love interests and between
each other.
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Page updated 9/26/13
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