Is there magic still left in the genre?
BASED on the bestselling novel of the same name by Deborah Harkness, A Discovery Of Witches (Sky One, tonight, 9pm) has been one of the most eagerly awaited dramas of the year. That’s hardly a surprise - with the recent appetite for all things supernatural still going strong in drama at the moment, this latest addition to the genre seems almost custom made to ride that wave. Diana Bishop (Hacksaw Ridge’s Teresa Palmer) is young historian working away in the bowels of Oxford University’s Bodleian library. Oh, she also happens to be a witch, but her attempts to suppress that part of her nature are threatened when she discovers a lost magical manuscript which brings her into contact – and a relationship – with a mysterious vampire, Matthew Clairmont (Downton Abbey’s Matthew Goode). That encounter opens up a whole new side of Oxford for the young historian/ witch and we soon learn that witches, vampires and all sorts of spooky things live and work among us, we’re just not paying enough attention to finding them. It all sounds like a bit of a mash up between Twilight, Harry Potter and, given both the Oxford location and inclusion of ‘daemons’, there’s a nod to Philip Pullman’s wondrous His Dark Materials. The book, part of the All Souls trilogy, has developed a legion of dire-hard fans, although whether the magic realism of the novels can be accurately transplanted onto the screen remains to be seen, but hopes are high. Either way, it certainly seems light enough for a Friday night... OhGod,herewego again – having just finished the ‘celebrity’ version, the regular Big Brother (Virgin Media 2, 9pm) returns tonight. Will we never be free? The run which just ended proved to be more controversial than even the producers would have wanted. After all, they thought they were surfing the zeitgeist by booking Trump-boffing porn star Stormy Daniels, who promptly pulled out. That decision paved the way for Roxanne Pallett to drag the show into that most uncomfortable arena of #MeToo messiness and the vexed issue of false allegations of domestic violence. Pallett’s bizarre behaviour and sheer, mind-numbing stupidity (trying to make false allegations when you’re on camera 24/7 would seem fairly dense, one would have thought) quickly turned her into this month’s most hated person. No doubt the civilian participants will be desperately trying to emulate her headlinegrabbing antics...