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Posted in: AMC, BBC, Review, TV | Tagged: bbc, bleeding cool showtime, Domino Day, romantasy, supernatural drama, witchcraft
Domino Day: Fresh Story, Great Cast Held Back by Dull Tropes (REVIEW)
Domino Day: Lone Witch (US Title) is a solid, fresh take on the urban witch genre, but its lack of humour keeps it from achieving greatness.
Domino Day, or as the US title Dominio Day: Lone Witch (to be clear exactly what the series is about lest anyone thinks it's a show like gambling or the weather), is a new BBC Three series (available on AMC+/Sundance Now) about a renegade witch who moves to a new city while trying to control her powers and runs afoul of the local coven and other forces. It's a fresh take on the supernatural fantasy in a post-Buffy landscape that is good but should have been great, and that is its problem. It has a good premise and a fantastic cast of diverse unknowns, but it's held back by sticking to all the usual and increasingly tired tropes of the genre.
Sienna Kelly plays Domino, a lonely young witch barely able to control her power, which includes the need to feed on people. She has moved to Manchester to start a new life and uses dating apps to pick douchebags that she ends the night feeding on. Her actions result in her getting tracked by the city's coven of witches who have to decide whether she's a threat to their order, and she's still haunted by her toxic ex-boyfriend and his mother, who is part of another ancient coven that wants to steal her power to add to theirs. Domino and the young witches are up against predatory men and an establishment that stays rich and powerful from taking their power. It's a classic fantasy plot.
The biggest problem with Domino Day is its shocking lack of humour of any kind at any instant throughout the entire first season. Not once does anyone crack a joke. Jokes and humor relieve tension to let the mood of a story ebb and flow rather than stick to a constant dirge of po-faced seriousness and intensity throughout the story. And let's not forget that the British are the snarkiest people on the planet. Rebellion and irreverence are bred into British people's bones, and Manchester, the city where Domino Day takes place, is considered the coolest city in England now, more than London, and that includes a lot of earthy snarky humour.
It is impossible and inauthentic for these characters to survive without snarky humour – they'd be laughed out of the city in a week. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was successful and became a classic because not only did it update the fantasy genre to metaphors and symbols for modern anxieties, but the wisecracks not only lightened the dark moments but also grounded them. Domino Day's greatest enemy, in the end, wasn't toxic men or older people who wanted to steal her power but the utter humourlessness of everyone. That lack of humour lets down the cast of young actors who would have been much more well-rounded as characters than the straightforward earnest ones we were presented with – even if they got to deliver the occasional spicy line.
Despite all that, should you still watch Domino Day: Lone Witch? If you're a fan of the supernatural fantasy genre, yes. It's well-directed, and the cast is impeccable, even if the story relies on the usual trope of the heroine finding the truth of her origins and discovering her true inner power to defeat the Establishment. The world it creates feels fresh, the Manchester setting is new from the usual practice of Vancouver or Toronto standing in for New York City, and the cast acts like they're people rather than that self-consciousness you find in American TV acting. It's better written, less messy, and less problematic than the first season of Mayfair Witches, but AMC has invested more in that series than just picking this one up from BBC Three. Instead of streaming, it should have been paired with Orphan Black: Echoes to make a strong Sunday night AMC lineup. If it just had any humour, it could have been great. Instead, it's just good enough.
All six episodes of Domino Day: Lone Witch are now streaming on AMC+.
Domino Day: Lone Witch
7/10
A fresh, diverse modern take on witches and a classic Heroine's Journey, this series might have been great if the writing had more wit and humour to ground the seriousness and increasingly common tropes of the supernatural fantasy genre. The cast is an ensemble of unknown faces who act like people and not TV characters and deserved better writing to make them shine. As a new entry into the urban supernatural fantasy genre it's still worth watching, but it left a lot of potential on the table.
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