A Discovery of Witches
SKY ONE, 9.00PM
Author Deborah Harkness isn’t the first to conceive a world in which vampires, demons and witches walk among us. Indeed, she has said that her bestselling series of novels came about as a sort of “thought experiment” regarding the enduring modern fascination with magic and the occult. This new eight-part adaptation of the first in her All Souls trilogy is smartly cast and conjures up an atmosphere distinct from such obvious influences as the Harry Potter and Twilight franchises.
The focus is a powerful, ancient tome which is inadvertently discovered in Oxford’s Bodleian Library by Diana Bishop (Teresa Palmer), a scholar and a witch who has long denied her magical heritage. Said book is much coveted by those in the know, including Matthew Goode’s gleefully saturnine bloodsucker and Owen Teale’s brooding, sinister expert in dark magic. In so doing, she causes others to break cover and casts the uneasy peace between humans and the supernatural into doubt. Played just broadly enough without tipping into the camp (at least until Trevor Eve arrives as the arch-villain), this is a breezy, entertaining and occasionally bloody remix of familiar and popular themes. Gabriel Tate