These Beautiful Sisters Will Have You Enchanted From The Word Go (Charmed)

Member Name: GramiWay

Product:	Charmed
Date:	17/07/08 (22 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Strong female leads and family values, mixture of all sorts of different genres

Disadvantages: Long, drawn out storylines at times

"Charmed" was a show set in San Francisco, California which began airing in 1998 and running for 8 seasons on the WB network in America and mostly played on Living TV in the UK. The show at the time of it's first episode broke the WB's network record for the most viewers watching a series premier [7.70 million viewers in total a record it held until 2001 when Smallville took over]. After it's run and 178 episodes the show was recognised as the longest running drama show with all female leads. Produced by the late Aaron Spelling who had worked on shows such as Dynasty, Charlie's Angels, Sunset Beach and 7th Heaven to name a few.

The concept of the show focuses around three sisters who in the show's first episode discover their age old family secret. That they are in fact witches.
Known throughout the supernatural community as 'The Charmed Ones' a powerful force of good prophesised centuries ago to fight the forces of darkness the rest of the world saw them merely as the Halliwells - three twenty something sisters living in a victorian themed manor.

Upon the show's first season the sisters were Prue [Shannen Doherty], Piper [Holly Marie Combs] and Phoebe [Alyssa Milano] and from the offset their relationship was frosty.
What made Charmed so successful was the fact that it appealed to many different audiences. The family feel of the show reflected in the fact that the Charmed ones are first and foremost sisters and also the fact that the show not only dealt with various supernatural creatures from mythology and fiction but also created romance, tragedy and comedy in the way the sisters tried to balance their wicca duties with their attempts to lead normal lives. For Prue this often meant her highly stressful job at an auction house and then a photographer getting in the way whilst Piper went from working at a restaurant to running a nightclub the main focus of her struggles was trying to maintain a normal relationship with the girl's whitelighter - Leo [deemed as a guardian angel for witches and played by Brian Krause]. The two were the show's main couple and many of the major story arcs over 'Charmed's' eight year run revolved around their struggle to be together and get married and later the conflicts that arose when they had children.

As for Phoebe, being the youngest sister found her with no sense of direction or prospect but as the show continued she grew to arguably become the most successful of the three writing her own advice coloumn for a newspaper and her quest for love and happiness often consumed her throughout the latter stages of the show.

After the death of Prue at the end of season three [Doherty left due to personal reasons that beyond rumours have never been truly disclosed] Rose McGowan was cast as the new charmed one Paige Matthews. The result of an affair the girl's mother had with her whitelighter Sam, they gave her up for adoption due to the relationship being forbidden and Paige is called upon to reconsumate the Charmed Ones upon the death of her elder sister.

Whilst the show's dynamic had a more serious tone to it with Doherty present and had more sense of a running drama, it seemed to lapse into at times a bit of a farce with McGowan on board though I still remained loyal to the show until it's very end - the feel and way the show was managed changed drastically and at times the individual episode plots did seem to sag and were fairly weak to those of the first three seasons.
Though in contrast to that the show actually began to develop longer running villains and bigger evils for the girls to face after finding its feet and relying heavily on a different demon every week previously many of the show's major villains such as The Source, The Seer, Zankou, Gideon and the avatars appeared during McGowan's time on the show.

The girls were joined by a variety of characters during the show's run such as Leo and police inspector Andy Trudeau [Ted King] who acted as a love interest for Prue in the first season before being killed, his partner Darryl Morris [Dorian Gregory] then took over from season two onwards assisting the girls in their investigations and providing a much needed coverup during times of exposure.

The girls grandmother [Grams played by Jennifer Rhodes and mother Patty played by Finola Hughes] are also often on hand through spirit form to offer advice and guidance. Julian McMahon plays Phoebe's major love interest Cole Turner from Season 3 to Season 5 and whilst at first the initial concepts of the relationship were interesting and provided some of the best scenes on the show I felt that like many storyarcs on Charmed it outran its welcome and by the time Cole was finally vanquished in the show's 100th episode 'Centinental Charmed' the result for me as a viewer wasn't half as satisfying or interesting as the possibily had been half a season or so before.

The addition of Kaley Cuoco in season eight as trainee witch Billie Jenkins was also in my opinion a bad decision. She became a very worn out and repetitive character that ruined the majority of the last season which also saw the sisters paired off instantly and things draw to a close far too quickly for my liking.

Charmed may seem to many a fairly run of the mill show but the three sisters work together perfectly, their different senses of style and personalities bounce off each other and create humourous and touching scenes all at the same time.
With some hilarious stand out episodes such as 'She's A Man, Baby A Man' in which Prue is transformed into a man to 'nail' a succubus and 'Sin Fransisco' when the girls are infected with one of the seven deadly sins are just two of the episodes off the top of my head that mix light humour and supernatural antics together to explain why this show was so popular.

Whilst I felt the show ran out of steam towards the end of its run and started to include a lot more supernatural themed characters and allies in later stages such as leprachauns it was disappointing that a lot of the things that were bought in at a later date were not included during Doherty's time on the show, maybe it's those facts that changed the feel of the show and made it have a proper supernatural feel to it. Also the fact that a lot of the storylines in the first two or so seasons seemed to constantly revolve around the character of Prue whilst they seemed more balanced out later on with all tragic and personal aspects of each sister's lives being explored fairly.

On the whole Charmed is a fantastic, family fueled show that mixes drama with humour and romance and knows when to stay within its boundaries making it most of the time a show that you can sit and watch with your children. It's a whole new world and one that allows you to be sucked in and lose yourself in the ups and downs of the Halliwell sisters even if it's for just a little while. Whilst it may have it's obvious flaws there's no denying it's a show that stood the test of time and has enchancted audiences long after it ended in 2006. Forever Charmed indeed.

Summary: A spellbinding show that mixes family values with supernatural goingons