Brief Story Line
In the world where fairies and magical creatures exist, a 16 year old girl named Bloom (Abigail Cowen) started to go to a special school for fairies in Alfea. Being a person who just realized she was a fairy, made Bloom having difficulties to adjust with her new life. Luckily she stayed in a suite together with friendly first year students like Aisha (Precious Mustapha), Terra (Eliot Salt), Musa (Elisha Applebaum) and a snobby second year student Stella (Hannah van der Westhuysen). Bloom also befriended a second year specialist named Sky (Danny Griffin) who has a best friend fellow specialist Riven (Freddie Thorpe). Aside from those students, there was also a new fairy named Beatrix (Sadie Soverall) who had a knack for Alfea's history.
The headmistress of Alfea was Farah Dowling (Eve Best - Nurse Jackie TV series etc) who happened to be the one bringing Bloom there. Together with the fencing instructor Saul Silva (Robert James-Collier - Downtown Abbey TV series etc) and botany teacher Ben (Alec Macqueen), the three of them were the pillars of Alfea who tried their best to protect the school and students from outside danger especially mythical creatures referred to as the Burned Ones.
As a fairy coming from dormant fairy bloodline, Bloom really struggled with learning magic and also finding out her real background with the help from her suite friends. Meanwhile the Burned Ones were starting to appear near Alfea, endangering everyone's lives. So what would happen to Bloom and friends? Find them all in this surprisingly entertaining series.
End of Brief Story Line
Watching this kind of series to me was pretty much like a gamble. It might be worthwhile or it could be a disaster. This time around, I was actually quite satisfied and surprised to see myself enjoying this series. Despite having a confusing start as it began with Bloom coming straight to Alfea without any context or background scenes, slowly I could understand better as some scenes were shown to give us explanation, even if one specific part was not really clarified.
The story itself was pretty generic, with fairies learning how to use their magic, plus a bit of romance here and there between them and the specialist. Oh in case you're wondering, the specialists were people without powers like fairies but they were trained to be soldiers. During the early part, I felt there were a bit of similarities with Shadowhunters: The Mortal Instruments series where the lead character was a young woman who only found out she has magical power and went into the world she never knew existed, although that one was more of young adults as opposed to teeneagers in here.
Now what I liked about this series was the fact the story developed in a quite fast pace. I think having only 6 episodes really helped as they need to go straight to the important stuff. By the first episode we were already shown quite a lot including a suspenseful scene which would impact the whole season's story. The journey of Bloom to find out her history was quite intriguing, plus the other characters were quite interesting as well. Although, I felt there was a bit of unbalance portion between Bloom and her friends which was surprising considering the others were supposedly the main characters (not only Bloom). Btw, most of the young actresses and actors here were unfamiliar to me, except for Abigal Cowen who played as Dorcas in Chilling Adventures of Sabrina series. As for the adults, I only knew Robert James-Collier from his time in Downton Abbey. But in general, they played their roles adequately and I have no complaints on them.
Another thing I like about the series was the music which were filled with nice songs that felt youthful, just like the series theme. The special effects were not spectacular but sufficient. The make up effects of the burned ones and sound effects were good too. Oh the series was also said to be the darker live version of quite popular animated series Winx Club (created by Iginio Straffi) that aired on Nickelodeon for 8 seasons. However, it seemed there were creative changes done in here like different characterization of Musa (supposedly based on Asian origin) and Terra (named Flora in the animated series and supposedly based on Latina origin). Not to worry though, as this live adaptation was not that difficult to follow and did not require us to watch the cartoon version to understand or appreciate better.
For a series focusing on fairies with different magic power, this one was enjoyable for me because of the fast pace and the interesting magic of fire, water, earth, light and even mind. I really loved the season finale as it has many surprising turn of events and twists which promised to make a fantastic second season. So let's hope they would make it, as otherwise it would leave an awful cliffhanger ending. If you like series with attributes I mentioned earlier, then you could definitely give it a try and you might enjoy it as much as I did. But if teen drama is not your favorite, then this would not be to your liking. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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