At the center of the story are several generations of the Mayfair family – hereditary witches over whom the mysterious evil spirit Lasher (Jack Huston) has power. The complex pedigree of a magical family splits Mayfair’s history over several decades: from Deirdre (Annabeth Gish from Midnight Mass) living at the turn of the last century to her daughter Rowan (Alexandra Daddario), who was taken from her at birth, trying to understand her mysterious origin.
Deprived of his biological mother from infancy, Rowan does not gain a sense of support even in adulthood: he lives not in an apartment, but on a small boat, trying to realize and redeem himself in his favorite profession (Rowan is a surgeon). His stepmother dies of cancer. But contrary to this Hippocratic oath, the heroine with magical powers can not only save the lives of patients, but also deprive them of their enemies.
The girl’s curse has an immediate effect, and the viewer witnesses it twice in the first series: first she dies in front of her harmful surgeon colleague Rowan, and then a narcissistic medical investor who promises to find the key to eternal life (ironically dies much faster than her own). desperate patients). Shocked by the inner power of revenge, Rowan tries to understand the sources of revenge and find the real witch mother.
Anne Rice’s literary trilogy celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2020, but has now reached a full-fledged film adaptation. With the same wicked irony, the author himself didn’t live to see the series debut in a little over a year – Rice died in December 2021. However, the author took an active part in the work of the series and sold the film rights only on condition that the successful trilogy of the serial version of the story could accurately reflect the spirit of the witch.
The series was only halfway through with that: the project has a great atmosphere (cameraman Joseph Gallagher and Evans Brown and production designer Megna S. Rogers recreated the magical and beautiful world of history), but a much less successful script. The temporal break between heroines of the same family, but from different eras, seems like an overloaded plot maze, where complexity works against the idea.
The dialogues, written as if by a first-generation neural network, look no less disastrous: the characters’ speech lacks realistic believability, the expressions are primitive, and the style of communication is oversaturated with theatrical smugness. If this exaggeration is intentional, it is difficult to justify in a story far from Shakespeare’s stylistic standards.
At the same time, if you set aside the high expectations and the above cons, a project about a magical family from New Orleans forced to limit their unyielding power (or even manage to transform it forever) can become a delightful winter pastime. cold evenings (the series will air until the end of February).
Of course, for a show that talks so much about magic, it’s odd not to find the magic spark of a powerful teleromance. But it remains to be seen how the authors plan to develop a screen version of Rice’s work: AMC has announced the transition of The Witches of Mayfair with one of its latest premieres (and another adaptation of the author’s cult work) – the series “Interview with a Vampire”.
Perhaps a renewal of this plot would be a useful find for both shows, which suffered from the dryness of the original literary text – no doubt talented but as if too old for today.