Review of Eastwick Season One

The 1987 film The Witches of Eastwick has become a classic, and between its reputation and the legendary cast (starring Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michele Pfeiffer), it sets a high bar to top. However, taken on its own merits by someone who has never seen the famous movie, Eastwick, a 2009 television series based on the movie and the original novel, is a fun and sweet supernatural series.

Eastwick follows the lives of three women in the fictional town of Eastwick, New England. Roxie Torcoletti (Rebecca Romijn) is an artist and a free spirit with a bad reputation in town, living with her teenage daughter after her husband's death, and at the start of the show dating a much younger man. Joanna Frankel (Lindsay Price) is a reporter at the local newspaper, a painfully shy and awkward young woman. Kat Gardner (Jamie Ray Newman) is a nurse, a wife and a mother of five, unhappy in her marriage to her lazy, drunken husband, and uptight in most aspects of life.

The three meet making a wish at a fountain and, though they knew of each other in their small town and never liked each other before, find themselves bonding quickly. Shortly after their meeting, at which each of them wishes for something to change, they all begin showing signs of magical abilities: Roxie has psychic flashes, Joanna has the ability to make men do what she wants, and Kat can manipulate nature. At the same time as they are making their discoveries, the mysterious stranger Darryl Van Horne (Paul Gross) moves to town and inserts himself into their lives: buying the newspaper Joanna works for, and making her suspicious of his origins and motives; hiring Roxie to sculpt him; and convincing Kat to get a divorce.

While the show is not without its problems -- the writing can be clichéd or wooden at times, and Joanna's power makes little sense, to name two persistent ones -- it is also more interesting and original than its plot alone can convey. Small twists arise in most episodes that are unexpected even to people familiar with television convention. The acting is outstanding, and the frequent humor and sweetness of the episodes greatly outweighs the occasional bad writing. And the few times the show goes for drama, they do it well, with several touching moments in later episodes.

As of November 9th, ABC has cancelled Eastwick by declining to order any new episodes, but the rest of the season has been filmed will be airing, the finale showing on January 13th, 2010. Eastwick airs on ABC at 10:00 pm Eastern Standard Time, 9:00 pm Central.