Charmed - A Favourite

Originally, I was going to write a list of my twenty favourite television shows of all time (when I was a member of another website, these lists were insanely addictive to me). Writing a whole bunch of paragraphs about that many programmes can take a lot of time (as can actually deciding what that list will consist of). Instead, I'll just paste what I have already written about one of my favourite shows (it is clear from the title, that this show is Charmed).  

Charmed - The story of three siblings that discover they are witches in their late twenties, that they have to protect the world from warlocks and demon-y things while juggling their personal and professional lives. Charmed was a nice family show featuring three women that had chemistry in spades, that could all act convincingly and were believable as sisters. Each of the three leading women had an important place on the show, with distinct personalities and quirks. Prue was the overprotective authority figure that helped raise her sisters. Piper was the constantly on edge middle child that had to ease the tension between her siblings, and Phoebe was the youngest, the free-spirit that was constantly getting herself in trouble because of her inability to plan for the future. The show managed to balance the personal, professional, and witch-hunting sides of the sister's lives well (even the powers each sister had made sense. Prue helped raise her sisters, it would make sense that she would get the most aggressive power because of her protective nature. Piper doesn't have the confidence of her two sisters, being able to stop time would be very useful for her. Phoebe lives in the here and now, the ability to see the future could be used to help the character grow, to see how her actions will have an impact on her life).

Charmed as a show was never taken seriously. For a while, it was actually a solid, consistently entertaining television show with well developed leading ladies that handled the material they were given excellently (unless they had to be incredibly ridiculous, for example - Doherty and Milano having to act like children after being hit with fairy dust). The first four seasons of Charmed contain some of my favourite moments on television (admittedly, much of this is due to nostalgia - this was the show that kickstarted my tv obsession). The early years managed to balance comedy and drama convincingly. An episode could be fairly dark with some traces of humour to ease the tension or to keep the show watchable (while the later years focused on fairy tale creatures, ruining the personality of every character that wasn't called Piper, and generally being a pale imitation of what was once a highly watchable show).

After Shannen Doherty's departure, the show was never quite the same. The fourth season managed to hold a dark story arc together successfully, Holly Marie Combs gave consistently brilliant performances as a devastated Piper (Prue really was everything to her - her sister, mentor, and best friend). The show even managed to create a new, believable power of three with a whole new dynamic (I particularly enjoyed Piper's reluctant acceptance of Paige).

The show fell apart after season four. Constant streams of fairytale creatures, bad ideas, bad acting, lack of regard for continuity, and the sisters rarely behaving sisterly all contributed to the show suffering from a large decline in quality. As well as this, the supporting cast was never really used properly (and, apart from Cole, there really wasn't another character I truly cared for that wasn't one third of the power of three. Leo was super bland, constantly caused my favourite character unnecessary pain, due to the constant melodrama of their break-ups. Daryl was basically a plot device that only seemed to be used when the sisters had to be threatened by the law or helped out of a mess. I literally couldn't bring myself to care for Dan, Chris, Wyatt, or Billie for various reasons - mostly, because they didn't work well in their particular roles. For me, if the acting isn't good I find it very difficult to even care for a character - even if they are layered and well written. Obviously, those characters didn't have too much going on beneath the surface anyway).

When Charmed worked, it was magical (oh no, pun-alert!). Even when the show was horrible there was some level of enjoyment there for me at least (I can't get enough of 'so bad it's good' trainwreck television).

Favourite Episode; All Hell Breaks Loose

Favourite Character; Piper

Favourite Season; 3.