Witches the new TV trope?

Published 5:00 am Tuesday, October 8, 2013

BURNABY, British Columbia — Evidence of witchcraft was all over the house — actually a soundstage in suburban Vancouver. A wineglass full of feathers. Apothecary bottles filled with dried roots and herbs. The bodies of beetles and scorpions, neatly mounted under glass. A wooden light fixture whose frame, when viewed from a certain angle, suggested a pentagram.

You probably wouldn’t notice the curios, most of them tucked discreetly on shelves or hanging on cluttered walls, unless you knew what they were: the stuff of spells, ancient bits of magic, hiding in plain sight.

They reflect the premise of “Witches of East End,” a series that began Sunday on Lifetime and is based on the best-selling novel by Melissa de la Cruz: that a family of witches, the Beauchamps, has lived in a small Long Island, N.Y., town for centuries. The mother (played by Julia Ormond) has been cursed to see her daughters die horrible deaths, lifetime after lifetime (including once in Salem), because of their powers and those who were threatened by them. So this time around, she hasn’t told the young women what they are or practiced witchcraft in their presence, hoping it will change their fate.

The series is part of a resurgence in witch-theme TV shows, the perhaps inevitable response to a supernatural marketplace already saturated with zombies and vampires. Ryan Murphy’s “American Horror Story” anthology series begins its third season Wednesday on FX with “Coven,” a New Orleans-based tale of witchcraft and voodoo. WGN America’s first scripted series, “Salem,” scheduled for next year, is set during the 17th-century Massachusetts witch trials.

Though witches have always been prominent in popular culture — from the three witches in “Macbeth” to “The Wizard of Oz” and the nose-twitching comedy of “Bewitched” — they have almost always been second-class genre citizens. They’re usually relegated to sidekick or villain status in fantasy dramas, protagonists only in lighter, comedic fare like “Wicked” on Broadway or “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch” on television. It’s been 15 years since “Charmed,” the last successful witch TV series, went on the air (and seven since it ended). And there has never been a witch-centered blockbuster to rival the vampire craze of “Twilight” or even the zombie walk-generating fan devotion to “The Walking Dead.”

“We have development meetings where we talk about what kind of shows we want to do, and what kind of shows we think will attract a mass audience,” said Nina Lederman, senior vice president for scripted series at Lifetime, whose programs target a mostly female audience. “We all felt we wanted to be in the supernatural space. We looked at all the vampires and zombies that were out there and realized no one was doing witches. We saw that as a huge opportunity and felt we should jump on it.”

“Witches of East End” isn’t as dark and gory as “True Blood” or “American Horror,” but it isn’t a comedy either. “The programming landscape has gotten edgier and darker in general,” Lederman said. “In the past, witch stories have had to be campier or have a sense of comedy to succeed, especially for a female audience. I think their taste has evolved.”

This was important to Maggie Friedman, who adapted and serves as an executive producer of the Lifetime version of “Witches of East End.” She previously was the head writer and executive producer of “Eastwick” ABC’s failed adaptation of John Updike’s 1984 novel, “The Witches of Eastwick.” (The 1987 film version, though, starring Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon and Jack Nicholson, was a modest success.)

“This show is tonally very different from ‘Eastwick,’ which is part of why I wanted to do it,” Friedman said in a telephone interview from the show’s Los Angeles writing office. (She said she had fretted about being “typecast as just that girl who writes about witches, because I’ve written on all kinds of other TV shows,” but she liked the story so much she set aside her concerns.)

“There’s a long history of witch shows on television feeling light, and I wanted the stories in this one to have consequences. I wanted this to feel like a world where people could die, where bad things could happen,” Friedman said.

As to why there have been so few stories with witches as serious characters — not hags or sidekicks or comic relief — Jenna Dewan Tatum, who plays the impetuous Beauchamp daughter, Freya, has a theory. “I think the powerful woman archetype scares people,” she said. “There’s something about the history of our world that when women stand in their power, people freak out. And I think witches in particular really represent that.”