Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches Season One (2023) Review
Rowan Fielding (Daddario) is a passionate and intuitive young neurosurgeon whose life is about to change forever. Compelled by the loss of her adoptive mother to constantly question where she came from, Rowan is full of questions and as strange, inexplicable things start to happen around her – her search for the truth only intensifies.
Learning that she has supernatural abilities is only the beginning and as Rowan discovers that she is the unlikely heir to a family of powerful witches, she must grapple with the truth about who she really is and contend with a dark force that has haunted her family for generations.
Travelling to New Orleans to claim her legacy, Rowan soon learns that her newfound powers could have very dangerous consequences. Torn between life as she knew it and her seductive new powers, Rowan must distinguish good from evil and decide which side she’s on.
Based on the late Anne Rice’s novel trilogy LIVES OF THE MAYFAIR WITCHES this TV series is occasionally muddled and consequently not always easy to follow. However, when it does hit the spot, it dazzles but by and large it’s not up there with the high standards of the recent TV adaptation of the same author’s INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE – also part of AMC’s Immortal Universe franchise.
MAYFAIR WITCHES finds its groove around this first season’s midpoint when Jack Huston brings much needed oomph to proceedings as Lasher and from that point on it never loses traction, building up nicely for a second season, which was announced February 2023. As one not familiar with the source material, I can only assume that this first season is simply about setting things up for a hopefully more fully formed second round. On the plus side Alexandra Daddario makes for an engaging and likeable lead and the luscious settings and locations, especially that of the Mayfairs’ ancestral home.