As I was looking through the list of series shown on 1 of my most favorite channel SyFy, I found out that there was this one which somehow eluded me. It was already shown since end of 2015 and currently in its fourth season. It really looked intriguing as the story was about magic. I finished the first season in few days time and immediately wanted to write about the series. Ok, let's get on with it now.
Brief Story Line
Quentin Coldwater (Jason Ralph) was an awkward guy who seemed out of place anywhere. His only best friend was Julia (Stella Maeve - The Runaways etc) whom he knew since childhood. One day Quentin was somehow "transported" into a magical campus called Brakebill University where people could enroll to become a magician. He would later on meet with senior students Eliot (Hale Appleman) and Margo (Summer Bishil - The Last Airbender etc) who loved to have fun.
As Quentin was accepted in Brakebills, he finally could find meaning to his life, especially when he met and was attracted with another new student Julia (Olivia Taylor Dudley - The Vatican Tapes etc) who was very gifted in magic. Other new students in Brakebills included the brooding mind reader Penny (Arjun Gupta - Nurse Jackie TV series etc) and a girl with mysterious background Kady (Jade Tailor).
Meanwhile Julia who found out that magic was real, tried to find her own way to learn magic, despite being warned by Quentin not to do so. Things would not be so rosy all the time, as Quentin and the rest would later on be involved with a very powerful dark magical being called The Beast who seemed to be trying to kill him and his friends. Not to mention the seemingly fictional world called Fillory from the children's books that Quentin & Julia read, were likely real but might be in danger.
So how would the story continued? Find them all in this very interesting and amazing magical first season of the series.
End of Brief Story Line
OK, I personally thought the first season was really wonderful. This was one of those series where I was hooked up from the very first episode and was tempted to watch it nonstop. But as I still have to work, I had to allocate my time properly and could only finish this in few days time. It was having only 13 episodes which was quite fast paced and truly fun to watch.
The first episode was the one that made me interested. Nowadays, if I give a new series a try, I would decide based on the pilot episode whether I would continue or not. And so this fell into the category of definitely proceed. As I continue to watch, the fourth episode was something that I did not expect and a bit different from the other episodes but was a really good one. The story later on would progress a bit slower as the focus was more on the learning for these new students. Starting from episode 8 till the end of episode 13, it was a nonstop thrill with so many surprises and twists and it also became very dark. The 12th and 13th episodes were really my favorite and made me wanted to immediately jump to second season to find out more.
For me the reasons why I liked this series a lot was because it was about magic but not the standard illusion like David Copperfield type. I think this series was a bit like those Harry Potter movies but a lot darker. This was a series for adults, with quite a lot of violent and sexual reference not to mention foul languages. Only thing that I felt a bit bothering was the story supposedly set in college years for these people but the actors and actresses portraying the characters looked very mature and I thought did not fit in as first year college students. Plus the hair style of Jason Ralph as Quentin was really annoying (I could picture my wife complaining to this and wanted to cut the hair, if she started watching this one). But those were minor things that I was willing to overlook because of the very interesting premise.
The characters in here were not the perfect hero type. In fact all of them had their own flaws. Quentin was a young man who finally felt where he belong with the knowledge that magic was real but he was such an idealist & emotional and his magic was only average. While Alice was the best in magic but her family was far from ideal and made her having difficulty in blending in. Eliot and Margo were the senior students but their actions did not show their maturity at all. And Penny who had a unique ability which made him had to fight his own battle inside his head. But the worst of it all was definitely Julia whom sadly I thought was a very uninteresting character and did not have any contribution to the story (at least not until towards the end). So whenever there were scenes involving her, I always thought of them as a poor distraction. All the actors and actresses to my opinion were really wonderful and convincing in portraying all these characters as I really could picture them as real life people.
As a series about magic, there were scenes which we would be shown various type of magic. Some minor special effects were used to portray them. The magic was created by doing some hand movements which I found a bit similar to the one used by young Merlin in The Kid Who Would be King, but while that one was very comical, in here it seemed real. The visual effects of the fantasy world Fillory was also well done.
Overall, the first season was wonderful. It was amazing to see magic being used in such a way, and the darkness of the story made it even more interesting. The plot and twists were quite abundant with some surprises as well. And there were also some amusing scenes usually involving Penny's broodiness and his irritation of the awkward Quentin, not to mention the craziness & immaturity of Eliot & Margo. The villain was quite scary and really fit the story. Oh the story was adapted from novel of the same title written by Lev Grossman which was highly successful, critically acclaimed and spawned into a trilogy.
So if you are looking for a dark series about magic, revolving around some college students learning in university that taught magic, fighting against the Beast and with some fantasy land scenery, then you could find them all in here. Think a darker, more mature and violent US version of Harry Potter series. If you have started watching this since 3 years ago, then good for you! But if you have not and you fit into the category of people looking for such series like me, then by all means you should start now.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
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