After a fine, slow start with lots of good characterizations and great production values the series pretty much fell apart for me. The plot becomes muddled, leans heavy towards childrens books clichees and lacks basic plausibility, logic or depth. In the end the viewer gets one wildly insane suprise after the other thrown into his face, and I for one understood the last decision of Ada to join the "dark" side, as the witches for me became more and more holier than thou Hippie narcissists who love to whine and blame, but in the end care only for their own dubious, unclear cause and their smug little circle of "enlightened" women. The way they manipulated and exploited Ada for their own, pretty much unknown cause was more than enough to make her despise them.
The muddled, stereotypical plot heavy on romantic and high fantasy clichees and the soundtrack's sappy, wailing female rock musician can be explained by the series based on a romantic fantasy novel for teenaged girls. But this does not justify the gross, cheap misandry.
As the young boy is turned into some sort of pagan drag queen in the conclusion (and yes, it looks as lurid as it sounds), its really the evil, violent, dumb and hateful men against the kind, loving, enlightened and gentle witchy women now.
Never mind that they look like a bunch of prematurely aged, unkempt recreational drug users or that you never really get to understand what their mission, their enlightened knowledge or simply their daily routine in their fantastic mansion really is. They love to have arguments for no good reasons, though, and entertain grandiose fantasies of their superiority and meaningless pseudo spiritual discussions. And they love to exclude anyone not fitting into their "holy" group (because of their male gender?) with superficial reasons ("There is a dark spot in your heart..." -> Can she do X Rays? Did she really want to say "There is a penis down there"?).
And never mind that their hunters look much more impressive and serious, and also display more of a truly bonded, trusting group spirit. Still they are exploited and manipulated to conduct a crazy hunt for no good reason, and you never get to understand what the true cause for all the conflict actually is. It gets explained away as mens evil nature, which is a very easy way out. A scheming, manipulative bishop who is actually the devil in disguise comes handy as a further plot device, but what he really wants with that damned book everybody is after is also never fully explained. It is probably a book you can rule the world with, which would fit the cheap script.
In the end I could just hear the female filmmakers applauding themselves for their great feminist pseudo pagan work of art with surely would empower girls to hate men and express their wonderfully witchy, egocentric personalities. I, for one, was sad I wasted my time on this.
The muddled, stereotypical plot heavy on romantic and high fantasy clichees and the soundtrack's sappy, wailing female rock musician can be explained by the series based on a romantic fantasy novel for teenaged girls. But this does not justify the gross, cheap misandry.
As the young boy is turned into some sort of pagan drag queen in the conclusion (and yes, it looks as lurid as it sounds), its really the evil, violent, dumb and hateful men against the kind, loving, enlightened and gentle witchy women now.
Never mind that they look like a bunch of prematurely aged, unkempt recreational drug users or that you never really get to understand what their mission, their enlightened knowledge or simply their daily routine in their fantastic mansion really is. They love to have arguments for no good reasons, though, and entertain grandiose fantasies of their superiority and meaningless pseudo spiritual discussions. And they love to exclude anyone not fitting into their "holy" group (because of their male gender?) with superficial reasons ("There is a dark spot in your heart..." -> Can she do X Rays? Did she really want to say "There is a penis down there"?).
And never mind that their hunters look much more impressive and serious, and also display more of a truly bonded, trusting group spirit. Still they are exploited and manipulated to conduct a crazy hunt for no good reason, and you never get to understand what the true cause for all the conflict actually is. It gets explained away as mens evil nature, which is a very easy way out. A scheming, manipulative bishop who is actually the devil in disguise comes handy as a further plot device, but what he really wants with that damned book everybody is after is also never fully explained. It is probably a book you can rule the world with, which would fit the cheap script.
In the end I could just hear the female filmmakers applauding themselves for their great feminist pseudo pagan work of art with surely would empower girls to hate men and express their wonderfully witchy, egocentric personalities. I, for one, was sad I wasted my time on this.