Witches of East End Pilot - TV Series Review

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Witches of East End (Pilot) - TV Series Review

Joanna Beauchamp, is a witch, who is cursed with "eternal motherhood". She raises her daughters, Ingrid and Freya to adulthood, sees them grow into their power, then watches as magic leads to their deaths. Before she has even had a chance to mourn, she finds herself pregnant again, first with Ingrid, then Freya, and the cycle starts over. This time around she experiments with not telling the girls about their powers, offering them a chance to live a normal life in the hope that it will protect them. However, evil manages to find them anyway, with an enemy from the past turning up, posing as Joanna and framing her for murder. It's up to her daughters and her sister, Wendy to find the imposter and clear her name.



Meanwhile, Freya is engaged to a rich, handsome young mortal named Dash, but has been having second thoughts about the wedding, especially since meeting Dash's younger brother, Killian, who is literally the man of her dreams.



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Witches of East End is an American fantasy TV series, based on the book of the same title by Melissa de la Cruz. It stars Julia Ormond as Joanna, Jenna Dewan as Freya, Rachel Boston as Ingrid and Mädchen Amrick as Wendy. Of these four actresses, Mädchen Amick is the only one I recognised, from Riverdale (in which she plays Betty's mother, the unfortunately named Alice Cooper) and Twin Peaks (in which she plays Shelly Johnson, the waitress). She's also the most charismatic member of the cast, injecting a bit of fun and gratuitous nudity to the proceedings. Tom Lenk (Andrew from Buffy%%) also has a small part as Ingrid's workmate, who helps her perform a fertility spell for a coworker desperate to have a baby.



Watching the pilot reminds me of Passions (the NBC supernatural soap opera). There's a definite daytime soap vibe, with everyone looking like a supermodel with eerily perfect teeth and skin, living in ridiculously expensive looking houses and pausing dramatically for no reason. A couple of the characters do have a background in daytime soaps (Jenna Dewan was in The Young and the Restless and Dark Shadows, and Eric Winter, who plays Freya's fiancé, Dash, was in Days of Our Lives. The acting is a bit uneven, but the show made me laugh in places and I was intrigued by the premise, especially Joanna's curse, which sounds horrific. It will be interesting to see whether she finds a way to break the curse as the show goes on.



Witches of East End is silly, harmless fun. It's a good show to eat nachos to, or maybe catch up on some ironing.

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