Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Alexandra Daddario, Tongayi Chirisa, Jack Huston, Harry Hamlin, Hannah Alline, Beth Grant, Annabeth Gish, Ravi Naidu, Ian Hoch, Jen Richards, Suleka Mathew, Geraldine Singer, Charlayne Woodward, Emma Rose Smith, Dennis Boitsikaris, Madison Wolfe, Keyara Milliner, Deneen Tyler, Leslie Castay, Nadine Lewington, Melissa Chambers, Jay Thames, Erica Gimpel, Chris Coy, Tobias Jelinek, Cameron Inman, Joshua Mikel, Billy Slaughter.
There is a world created by one of the brightest literary minds to have illuminated the powers of fiction from the moment that she unleashed her erotic vampire onto the senses of the reader; this was no Dracula that she had brought into existence, this was a creature of sexual lusts, of homoeroticism, of melancholic heroism, and with Anne Rice as its author, the sense of ultimate fantasy was given the stamp of approval; not least for placing the narrative within the hedonism to be found in New Orleans as the 19th and early 20th century unfolded and the metropolis of the south was arguably the early incarnation of what is the original sin city.
Anne Rice found a way to bring a 1970s appreciation, of both decay and fear coupling with self-indulgent sexual satisfaction to the reader that resonated in way that sensed the 1960s free love movement had been built on a lie that was could not be sustained; and as Lestat and Louis, as New Orleans took centre stage, so Anne Rice’s name was assured.
There is something to be admired about an author who can bring a home city to the pages of literary fiction and give them a flourish of undeniable decadence, Dickens observed the poor and disenchanted and gave them a voice, Anne Rice understood and scrutinised New Orleans and released its gothic history like no other writer.
That gothic nature though was not confined to the world of vampires, and it only right that television has finally caught up with the prolific imagination framed by the much-missed author, and as Mayfair Witches is bought before an audience that found to their delight that the Interview With The Vampire as a series had a far greater degree of sincerity and beauty attached to it than the film of the same name could muster; and whilst the eight part tale starring the impressive Alexandra Daddario, Jack Huston, and Beth Grant is a sumptuous affair, it does seem to allow the several books in the series to be truncated, to eliminate that in which carried most of the intrigue across the times they were written.
To be divine though is to have to lose on occasion that which makes you impervious and arrogant, it allows the viewer to see a different viewpoint, to break down the narrative to a more conjoined rapport with fewer characters in the lineup that can alienate the structure of the tale.
Mayfair Witches again makes New Orleans come alive, but it adds the historical gothic passion that comes from walking down the same streets that we associate with the greats of Jazz, of that which refuses to be buried, of that which the ghosts come with a smile and scare you to death as they walk on by.
The justification of television’s faith in bringing Anne Rice’s universe to the attention of the voyeuristic tendency of the small screen aficionado is unrelenting and proper; even if cut to the point where it might lose some of its potency and power, it still has the intelligence and blood to make it a series of agency and illumination. Ian D. Hall