AMC have to be feeling fairly good about entering into mattress with Netflix proper about now. Due to a deal between the 2, a number of AMC reveals hit the streaming platform on August 19, 2024, and virtually instantly started climbing the Netflix charts. It is a gratifying flip of occasions for the AMC trustworthy who’ve been tuning into the community for years, solely to see their favorites overshadowed repeatedly by greater productions on HBO or Showtime. (That’s, except your collection includes Don Draper, Walter White, or zombies.)
The underseen Western crime drama “Darkish Winds,” as an illustration, has now discovered a complete new viewers because of this settlement. In the meantime, it seems lots of people have solely simply discovered that “Kevin Can F*** Himself” — the critically-acclaimed darkish meta-sitcom starring Alexis Rose herself, aka “Schitt’s Creek” alum Annie Murphy — even exists because of its premiere on Netflix. In line with viewership aggregator FlixPatrol, “Darkish Winds” has even grow to be the third-most streamed present of the final three days on Netflix as of August 22, 2024, with British fantasy TV import “A Discovery of Witches” (which made its stateside debut on AMC again in 2019) sitting comfortably within the quantity 5 spot. Even the “Strolling Lifeless” spin-off “Concern the Strolling Lifeless” has landed in ninth place, outpacing the fourth and ultimate season of Netflix’s homegrown comedian e book TV present “The Umbrella Academy.”
There’s additionally an AMC-backed Anne Rice adaptation occupying the quantity eight spot on Netflix’s prime charts … though it will not be the one you are considering of. No, for as a lot because the /Movie crew has sung the praises of AMC’s bloody-good (and in any other case bloody) melodrama “Interview with the Vampire” (and can little question proceed to take action sooner or later), it is really the witches of Mayfair which can be actively charting on Netflix because of “Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches.”
The Mayfair Witches are taking on Netflix
Simply as Stephen King is inseparable from Maine and you’ll by no means totally take the Philly out of Philadelphia boy M. Evening Shyamalan, Anne Rice liked to spin yarns of fantastical, horrifying mayhem set in her house metropolis of New Orleans. That prolonged to the late writer’s “Lives of the Mayfair Witches,” the ’90s Southern Gothic novel trilogy that serves because the supply materials for AMC’s “Mayfair Witches” collection.
Created by Michelle Ashford (“Masters of Intercourse”) and Esta Spalding (“On Changing into a God in Central Florida”), the present stars “True Detective” and “The White Lotus” veteran Alexandra Daddario as Rowan Fielding, a profitable younger neurosurgeon who discovers that she is secretly the inheritor to an extended line of highly effective witches upon making her option to New Orleans. Jack Huston (“Boardwalk Empire”) co-stars as Lasher, the darkish entity that has lengthy haunted the Mayfair clan, with Tongayi Chirisa (“One other Life”) and Harry Hamlin (“Veronica Mars”) rounding out the principle ensemble. “Mayfair Witches” can be a part of the identical small display screen universe because the “Interview with the Vampire” TV collection, dubbed the Immortal Universe, and the 2 share greater than a predilection for supernatural cleaning soap operatics.
What they do not share, nonetheless, is the favor of critics. “Mayfair Witches” season 1 solely holds a 44 % critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes and even /Movie’s Danielle Ryan (an ardent “Vampire” fan) wasn’t impressed by it. As she put it in her assessment, “A collection a couple of household of witches in New Orleans needs to be as gloriously over-the-top as the town itself, however as a substitute of a spicy jambalaya, the collection is about as flavorful as a bowl of plain steamed rice.” It is potential that the upcoming season 2 will lean more durable into the campiness of its supply materials (very similar to “Vampire” did), however will all that many of us tune in after the dismal response to season 1, even with the Netflix increase? Solely the Mayfair Witches themselves can divine that one.
“Mayfair Witches” is at the moment streaming on Netflix.