Beltane 1999 Newsletter Charmed - A Cranky Review by Peter

Outline
Three sisters, reunited by a death in the family, discover that they have ‘inherited’ special powers from their mother and grandmother; they are ‘the charmed ones’ with a mission to protect the innocent and improve ratings. This comes as something of a surprise to three 90’s girls with careers and complicated love lives. Fortunately for our heroines, in an old trunk in the attic (there always seems to be one) is grandma’s Book Of Shadows, which provides crucial information on each week’s crisis, so no-one has to think too hard.

Characters and Plots
"The Power of Three Will Set You Free". The three attractive young women leads struggle to fit the traditional aspects of Maiden, Mother and Crone.

• The youngest sister (the maiden?) is irresponsible and has a reputation (perhaps unfairly) for promiscuity.
• The middle sister (the mother?) is a cook, a role associated with motherhood in many cultures.
• The oldest sister (the crone?) is the serious one. We can tell this because she sometimes wears glasses.

The plots have settled down to a fairly predictable routine:

• Somewhere in the city a demon or warlock hatches their evil plan. Inexplicable corpses start turning up and innocent lives are in danger.
• Youngest sister has a precognitive vision, which warns everyone to look out for plot developments.
• This week’s innocent bystander or demonic foe turns up at middle sisters restaurant and the chase is on!
• After a few narrow escapes and some handy hints from the Book of Shadows the demon is vanquished and our innocent bystander gets to live happily ever after.

To help fill out the paper-thin plot, the sisters have constant problems with relationships, careers and how to reconcile these with inadvertently becoming a defender of the weak and saviour of souls.

What Is It Saying
‘Charmed’ does promote the positive message that witches don’t spend all their time growing warts and sacrificing goats. On a less encouraging note, it reinforces a number of negative stereotypes:

• Women can only possess power at the cost of personal happiness
• About half the people involved in witchcraft/wicca are either evil or under the influence of evil powers (but you can always identify the ‘bad’ women characters because they are wearing black lipstick)

Conclusions
‘Charmed’ is essentially harmless, if formulaic light entertainment and we shouldn’t expect too much. It is nice to see positive outcomes from (superficially) pagan protagonists but the program is unable to escape the effects of the studio production line. Basically a soap opera with a cat.

Charmed, Channel 10, Tuesday 9:30 pm. Try to be somewhere else.