AMC’s new ‘Mayfair Witches’ doesn’t stir a very potent brew
Well darn. AMC’s first Anne Rice adaptation, last year’s “Interview With the Vampire,” was a terrific, spirited updating that remained true to the tone and intelligence of the novel. AMC’s second Rice adaptation, “Mayfair Witches,” based on a trio of Rice novels, is a disappointment, a superficial and miscast take that left me cold. The themes of empowered women coping with male oppression are still in the mix, but what a dull mix it is.
Alexandra Daddario, who was excellent as the new wife of an entitled jerk on season 1 of “The White Lotus,” plays Dr. Rowan Fielding, a San Francisco neurosurgeon who begins to notice strange things. For instance, when she’s intensely angry at someone, say her boss, she’s able to cause aneurysms and such. Turns out she’s a witch with powers she doesn’t understand. When her adoptive mother dies, she goes on a journey to New Orleans to find out where she comes from, and she slowly learns — as we do, through flashbacks — about her supernatural genes. Her mother, played by Annabeth Gish, is also a witch, and she is being hidden and medicated into a stupor by her Aunt Carlotta (played by Beth Grant, who brings the energy lacking elsewhere).
Daddario spends a lot of time emoting to no effect. Her Rowan is capable, and driven, and other vague things, but she is ultimately a hollow lead. Jack Houston, who was outstanding in “Boardwalk Empire,” is vague and lacking in charisma as a shape-shifting spirit named Lasher who haunts the witches. Harry Hamlin, like Grant, brings some much-needed color as the Mayfair patriarch, but it’s not enough to fire things up. All these occult creatures are there on the screen, but, alas, they never quite cast a spell.