Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Mayfair Witches’ On AMC, About A Neurosurgeon Who Finds Out She’s Part Of A Powerful Family Of Witches

Anne Rice’s novels have been tough to adapt because of their lush New Orleans settings and their centuries-spanning timelines. But AMC took a big bet when it adapted Interview With The Vampire, and has seemed to have success with it. Now they’re taking on another Rice series, Mayfair Witches.

ANNE RICE’S MAYFAIR WITCHES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Water dripping into a swamp or pond. Then we pan down and see a typical Louisiana plantation mansion, overgrown with ivy and other vegetation.

The Gist: A new doctor makes a house call at the somewhat ramshackle mansion; he’s there to give a Thorazine shot to the catatonic patient (Annabeth Gish) sitting on the porch. He’s shocked to see that she’s so young; her file is so thick that she seems older than 47.

We then flash to San Francisco. Rowan Fielding (Alexandra Daddario) is an up-and-coming neurosurgeon who lives on a boat, as we see when her mother Ellie (Erica Gimpel) comes to celebrate the day she adopted Rowan. As a surgeon, Rowan seems to have right confidence and bedside manner, but she still gets bigfooted by people like her boss, who takes over a surgery she was scheduled to do and almost kills the patient.

Ellie’s cancer has returned, and Rowan wants to get her in a clinical trial at a private research firm, for which she’ll have to work part-time. When she goes to ask her boss, he starts lecturing her about her arrogance. When she gets angry, she envisions a blood vessel in his head bursting, at which point, he collapses. She tells Ellie about the experience, but she dismisses it — until she calls a number in New Orleans and asks to speak to Rowan’s case manager, Ciprien Grieve (Tongayi Chirisa).

In New Orleans, Deidre Mayfair (Cameron Inman) talks to her priest about the visits she gets from a mysterious man named Lasher (Jack Huston), who only she seems to see. Her parents have been dead for some time, including her mother, who supposedly jumped off a balcony at their family home, and she’s taken care of by her aunts, including the strict Carlotta (Beth Grant). Lasher seems to be the only constant in her life, and the only person who comforts and supports her.

During a lavish party thrown by her uncle, Cortland Mayfair (Harry Hamlin), he sets Deidre up with a young man whose sole purpose is to take her virginity. Indeed he does, but she starts to envision a more demon-like figure having sex with her, and when she sees someone transported out of her uncle’s house the next day under a sheet, she assumes it’s that young man.

A few months later, visibly pregnant, she merges with Lasher via a necklace she’s worn her whole life. She has the baby — a daughter — but Carlotta immediately whisks the baby away and she and the priest give it to a young woman — Ellie — and tells her to change their last name.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? AMC is trying to corner the market on Anne Rice adaptations, so it’s easy to relate Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches to their production of Interview With The Vampire, though Mayfair Witches seems to be less gory.

Our Take: Created by Esta Spalding and Michelle Ashford based on Rice’s trilogy, Mayfair Witches definitely has us on the fence. Daddario is close to mesmerizing as Rowan, who is a brilliant surgeon but lives a very solitary life, sleeping with either the local bartender or random men. She is starting to be aware that she possesses some sort of power, and she mentions to the bartender that there was a figure around her when she was younger that was more than likely Lasher.

But this first season is going to see Rowan discovering who she is and what she can do with her powers, without the help of her mother. Ciprien has promised keep her safe, but we’re not sure whether he’s really working in the witches’ best interest.

So there’s a lot to like here. There’s also a lot that could end up making us shake our heads. Rowan is supposed to turn dark and use her powers for evil-ish purposes, but we’re wondering if she’s just going to use it to burst blood vessels on a-hole men she encounters, like her boss or the owner of the research firm where she wanted to moonlight. Things may clarify as she gets to New Orleans, meets up with Cortland and starts finding out about the Mayfairs’ powers. She may not even turn evil as much as just use her powers to enhance her confidence in herself.

The way the story of Rowan and Deidre — who is the catatonic woman we saw at the beginning of the first episode — connects isn’t as shocking as Spalding and Ashford may think it is. We had that connection figured out the minute Rowan talked about the man that she used to see when she was younger. There was something about Deidre’s story that told us it was a flashback, so when Deidre got pregnant, we knew that the baby she was carrying was Rowan.

It’s not always necessary to build twists like this into a first episode, and when viewers can figure out the twist way ahead of time, that’s a good sign that it wasn’t necessary. Those are also yellow flags that could signal some storytelling issues down the road. We’ll just have to wait and see, but the more we see of Daddario, the more we like her as Rowan.

Sex and Skin: Two sex scenes — Rowan and the bartender, Deidre and her mystery man — are shot in a way that they would be safe for basic cable.

Parting Shot: On a stormy night on her boat, Rowan comes sees a mysterious figure on deck outside. It looks a lot like Lasher.

Sleeper Star: Our guess is that we’ll see more of Erica Gimpel via flashback. When we saw her as Rowan’s mom Ellie, we realized that she’s been on our screens for 40 years, starting when she played Coco in the TV version of Fame. Wow.

Most Pilot-y Line: When the bartender asks Rowan why she brings various strangers from the bar home, she replies with, “Well, for one, I bring guys like that home because they don’t like next to me and hound me with questions.” Oof.

Our Call: STREAM IT, but only because Diddario is so fascinating to watch. Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches feels like it could descend into mythmaking and not examine Rowan or its other characters enough to be satisfying. We’re just not sure yet.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere./