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SWITCH |
Stella -Lacey Turner Jude - Nina Toussaint-White Grace - Phoebe Fox Hannah - Hannah Tointon 
OTHER MAGIC USERS Hex Buffy The Vampire Slayer Eastwick Secret Circle Point Pleasant 
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Episode 1- First transmitted 15th OctoberFour witches flatsharing in London find that life isn't quite so easy when one of their number goes exploring and another's boss loses more of her memory than expected after a spell backfires. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. What had the potential to be a frothy, light and fun romp turns out to be a lumpy, unfunny mess that steals all its ideas from other places and proceeds to do very little with any of them. The jokes aren't funny, the drama's not dramatic and the characters are pretty interchangeable. True, the actors don't have a lot to work with from this poor script, but if this is the best that this new show is capable of then it's in trouble right from the start. TopEpisode 2- First transmitted 22nd OctoberThe coven faces up to the Witches of Kensington and finds that everything they try to get their own back turns into an unmitigated disaster. The second episode is an improvement on the first one, which isn't to say that it's good, but at least it is passable. The multiple storylines weave together well enough, but you have to wonder how any of the four girls get anything done since they are racing to each other's disasters all the time. The use of the remote control to keep the neighbour's kids under control starts off as a horrendously old idea, but actually works and Grace's needy boyfriend is a nice twist to a more usual situation. The characters have settled down a little and the actresses manage to flesh them out a bit more, certainly breathing more life into them than the script deserves. The Witches of Kensington are actually quite a fun nemesis even if they are cartoonishly overdone. Not great then, but better. TopEpisode 3- First transmitted 29th OctoberStella learns that the other girls cast a spell to erase her memory of an old lover and that's why she can't connect with other women. Now Lucy is back and nobody else is pleased about it. Lucy is a horrible character and that is obvious from the very first moment that she appears, which makes it much harder to understand why the usually intelligent Grace doesn't see it a lot, lot sooner. Of course, the plot would be over in seconds if she did. Instead, it is drawn out and rather annoying. Add to that a subplot with Hannah being hired to shoplift as a tester of security (yes, you can see where that's going) which makes her look terminally stupid and this is a regression that the show could have done without. TopEpisode 4- First transmitted 5th NovemberOn the eve of their fifth anniversary, the coven come under attack from the Witches of Kensington and are driven to the point of breaking up forever. It seems that the Witches of Camden need the Witches of Kensington to keep their show going. The machinations of the posh nemeses drive the plot and make things more interesting. Considering how every spell they carry out goes horribly wrong (this time making Grace dangerously overconfident) you would have thought that they would have given up by now. The resolution, including the subversion of the enemy, works quite well and this is possibly the best episode of the lacklustre show so far. TopEpisode 5- First transmitted 12th NovemberNow that Grace is with her ex-boyfriend, Jude takes up with a man she hardly knows and finds that he is severely unsuitable. Stella tries speed dating and Hannah tries tutoring. Men, it seems, are all useless. Grace's first catch was a hopless emotional wreck, her current man is a wastrel would-be popstar and Jude's new lover is an arrogant ball of anger likely to explode at any minute. If there's a positive male role model in the whole show then he's hiding really well. Aside from that, some of the jokes work, but most of them don't. The situations are hopelessly outdated and only the naturaly charm of the actresses keeps the whole thing from imploding embarrassingly. TopEpisode 6- First transmitted 19th NovemberIt's the festival of Solstice and the girls head off to the countryside to show what they can do and reconnect with their loved ones. Or at least that was the plan. It's the final episode of this first series of SWITCH and the canvas is made a little wider by taking the show into the countryside for the festival of Solstice and like so many things in British sitcoms it's all a bit pathetic really. The jokes aren't very funny, only a couple of the situations are amusing, the plot is frankly risible and the whole thing is anticlimactic. Considering that Grace's romance with Jude's ex has been a big focus for the show, the speed with which she drops him at the end renders everything that has gone before utterly pointless and his character behaves in a way that is completely unbelievable. SWITCH has been hit and miss since the beginning (with the accent on the 'miss'), but there is not one thing in this whole unwieldy mess of an episode that actually hits the target. Top |
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