Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Teresa Palmer, Matthew Goode, Trevor Eve, Owen Teale, Lindsay Duncan, Alex Kingston, Edward Bluemel, Sheila Hancock, Tom Hughes, Adrian Rawlins, James Purefoy, Gregg Chilingirian, Malin Buska, Aiysha Hart, Valerie Pettiford, Aisling Loftus, Tanya Moodie, Adelle Leonce, Sorcha Cusack, Steven Cree, Daniel Ezra, Jacob Ifan, Sophia Myles, Greg McHugh, Leo Ashizawa, Milo Twomey, Trystan Gravelle, Holly Aird, David Newman, Peter McDonald, Amanda Hale, Anton Lesser, Straun Rodger,
We have thankfully moved on from the days of vampires, demons, and witches being represented as the epitome of evil that stalks the land, even modern retellings of Dracula can portray the Prince of Darkness more of a figure of melancholic travesty and unavoidable malcontent, produce masterpieces of the gothic nature to which the disgraced days of simple manufacture and lazy writing were often lauded.
The issue that pervades though is the fine line between showcases the husk of human emotion that these creatures once represented and the outwardly sexualisation of the image; and whilst sex sells, it also has to be one that has to be meaningful, it has to hold the tale being sold in high regard, and it must be one that surely is shrouded in the deepest mystery of all, one that captures the mystery of the great beyond, love.
Whilst demons and the demonic, the creatures of the night and the scarred imagination, are to be seen as fables, the products of control for the masses and stories of damnation if we veer off the righteous path, there is surely more to the allegory and wild speculation that what first appears, and it is television serials such as the second outing for A Discovery of Witches that frame this narrative, that history, no matter how tangled and incomplete, was a period in which these often either beautiful or grotesque were to feared for their potency, for the idea, especially in witches, that the figure of the inverted woman was able to cast a spell on the surrounding villages, that vampires were the image in which the Devil could pass amongst.
The story continues, and a grand tale of union A Discovery of Witches is, and whilst the second series continues apace by taking a side look at history, the influence that both vampire Matthew Clairmont and witch Diana Bishop, portrayed with great power and enchantment by Matthew Goode and Teresa Palmer, have on the court of Elizabeth I and the surrounding passions of a London in its embryonic state as a city of ensuing change, it is in the present that the true discovery is to be found.
The series is intriguing, one that does not descend into the pit of attempted allure and trash writing covered up by presenting the sparkle of sex in an attempt to manipulate the watcher as a view to be titillated, A Discovery of Witches is more flesh than image, it is persuading without being prompted, it is scintillating without the objectivity and the lies of the gratuitous being involved.
With superb performances by Trevor Eve, Owen Teale, Lindsay Duncan, Valerie Pettiford, Sheila Hancock, and James Purefoy being added to that of the two main leads, the second series of this ingeniously crafted tale is one of spectacle, of magic, and of insight; one that is beautifully captured and produced for a generation of fans raised either on the darker side of the popularity of witches, vampires and demons.
Ian D. Hall