I Watch TV: Mayfair Witches

 

Mayfair Witches

Rowan Fielding is a neurosurgeon in San Francisco; her adoptive mother is dying. She takes chances in surgery that always work out, almost like magic. When she’s dressed down by her boss, he has a stroke. When she tries to get her adoptive mother onto a clinical trial and the bio-tech billionaire tries to play some dominance games, he has a stroke. It’s like magic.

Her birth mother, Deidre Mayfair, lives in New Orleans in the Mayfair house. She’s kept sedated and controlled by her aunt Carlotta. She was drugged or enchanted, raped and became pregnant as a teenager. This leaves Cortland Mayfair in charge of the Mayfair business. Deidre encountered the Mayfair family demon, Lasher, who they made a bargain with thirteen generations ago.

Deidre escapes her family’s control; when Rowan’s adoptive mother dies she tries to track down what’s happening to her and goes to New Orleans. The various machinations of the Mayfair family and Lasher’s attempt to bind her to whatever he’s got going on are complicated by two other organisations. First the Talamasca, a secret society that observe the supernatural and try and keep it under control. Ciprien Grieve is an empath who detects things through touch. Sent to find out what’s going on with Rowan, he inevitably gets caught up in her problems, the two becoming lovers and/or having weird magical experiences. This isn’t really what he’s supposed to be doing.

The other strand is an anti-witch cult, they’re a little bit online, a little bit evangelical, quite a bit anti-feminist. One of them, Keith Murfis, is a coroner, who has come into contact with the Mayfairs. At the moment when Rowan decides she’s probably not going to be a Mayfair, a witch, and Lasher’s minion, the cult strike.

This is all pretty good on an episode by episode basis. The flashbacks to 17^th century Scotland are brief and disconnected, though the thrust is pretty clear from the start: women’s store of knowledge is a threat to the puritan men. And Lasher not explaining what he wants, not working towards what he wants, generally not making sense, well, he’s an immortal spirit summoned in a bargain in 17^th century Scotland 13 generations ago. Fine, he’s enigmatic. Sadly everyone else’s plots and plans are nonsensical and badly timed as well. I suspect it would not hold up on a re-watch.

Watch This: The second most famous series of novels by Anne Rice comes to the small screen, with some thoughts on legacy, corruption, possession, lack of control and male and female power
Don’t Watch This: Sloppy plots and the introduction of a dozen Mayfair cousins halfway through is confusingly done