Historian and witch Diana Bishop returns to Oxford to continue her studies of alchemy and hopefully grab a position at the university. But a strange experience with a book she checks out for research leads to a run in with some of the other ‘creatures’ who inhabit this quiet academic town, who have issues of their own. Suddenly, despite doing her best to renounce magic, Diana finds herself the subject of intense interest from all sides of the creature community.

A Discovery of Witches is an exceedingly American take on the whole idea of supernatural creatures in a British setting. Placing its action in Oxford, it’s full of long establishing shots of the landscape, quiet pauses, and lingering looks from one character to another. It’s also fairly rote and familiar to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the genre as a whole.

Diana is our central protagonist. A witch who doesn’t want to use magic for reasons which are yet to be revealed to the audience, she’s been away for a while but has now returned to Oxford to continue her academic career. Of course, small incidences of her magic keep accidentally leaking out, so that we know she’s quite powerful and bursting with an ability she doesn’t wish to use but cannot fully control. Checking out a book from the Bodleian Library seems fairly routine, but this is no ordinary experience, and it’s not just Diana who notices the effects her reading the thing has.

This neatly brings us to Matthew Clairmont, professor of biochemistry and vampire. He has a particular interest in the book in question because it may contain answers to some issues that the vampire community has been experiencing of late. He’s also rather keen on witches not having access to it, for reasons which become clear as the episode progresses.

Matthew Goode as Clairmont fairly crackles with screen presence, a quiet and restrained demeanour clearly masking a nervous energy beneath. His scenes with Teresa Palmer’s Diana are the best thing about the episode, the tension between them compelling to watch. Elsewhere, it’s all a little sedate. Louise Brealey feels a little wasted as Diana’s nervous, quiet friend and fellow witch Gillian. Alex Kingston gets to (literally) phone in as her Aunt and everyone else is just sort of… there.

There’s also an early scene wherein the only question is literally which one of two characters appearing in it is going to turn out to be a vampire, and when the answer comes it isn’t all that exciting. It all feels very Merchant Ivory in its sensibilities, with the lingering scenery shots and the restrained nature of everyone we see.

Verdict: A slow start, but there’s promise here between the performances of the two leads. I’m quietly intrigued but not holding out hope for anything especially innovative at this point. 6/10

Greg D. Smith