BritBox and Acorn have not released a lot of new shows or series updates recently. We starting watching Survivor from the first season since I have never actually watched it (more on that in another post). There is only so much “reality” one can take, so we started looking for something else to add to our steaming mix. Amazon Prime recently offered up some AMC shows for free, so we decide to check out A Discovery of Witches. It is a British show with a vampire trope that Teresa really enjoys, so seemed like a great candidate.
A Discovery of Witches is a British action fantasy series based on the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness. The show’s central them is a world where vampires, witches, and demons live secretly among humans. It blends this theme from Twilight and True Blood with a Harlequin-style, time-jumping romance like Outlander. The main character in the story is Diana Bishop, a historian who area of specialization alchemy and it’s links to modern science. She is also a reluctant witch. She discovers a long-hidden bewitched manuscript in Oxford’s Bodleian Library. Vampires, witches, and demons have been searching for it for centuries because it is believed to hold the secrets to the origins of each of the species. She is offered help by a mysterious geneticist and 1500-year old vampire Matthew Clairmont.
The cast features some strong performers. Teresa Palmer plays Historian Diana Bishop and Matthew Goode, who you may know from The Crown, plays Clairmont. Edward Bluemel, Louise Brealey, Malin Buska, Aiysha Hart, Owen Teale, Alex Kingston, and Valarie Pettiford make up a strong supporting cast. This type of show is always a bit campy, but features solid performances by most of the cast. Palmer’s is probably the weakest.
There are three 8 episode seasons so far. We are just finishing up Season 1. WE are enjoying it. If you are looking for an enjoyable supernatural-romance trope show, it is worth checking out. Here is the trailer from Season 1 and the BBC America real with cuts from the cast.