Eastwick (Fernsehserie)

Eastwick is an American television drama series created by Maggie Friedman. The series is a television adaptation of the John Updike novel, The Witches of Eastwick. The show currently airs on ABC and is currently being produced by Warner Bros. The show premiered on September 23, 2009 at 10:00 PM ET. The show follows the lives of three strangers, Roxanne, Joanna and Kat, who meet at a wishing fountain and soon become friends. A mysterious man named Darryl Van Horne has moved to Eastwick and has plans for the women, and befriends them. Even more dangerous, he unleashes their supernatural powers, and their true potential. By igniting their hearts' desires, he might just be opening Pandora's box.

Production

The series is based on the 1984 novel, The Witches of Eastwick, and the film counterpart of the same name. While the book was created by John Updike, the series was concepted by Maggie Friedman, who wanted to create a show about female empowerment and a show that is magical but also real, just the reality will be a little heightened. ABC picked the show up early 2009.

The series is filmed on a Warner Bros. set, using the same town set as The WB's series, Gilmore Girls. Filming of the Pilot began in August 2009 when all characters had been cast, the last one being Matt Dallas on July 30. ABC decided the show should be on Wednesdays at 10/9c, after another new show, Cougar Town on ABC's Comedy Wednesdays.

Cast

Casting

Jaime Ray Newman was the first to land a starring role on Eastwick on February 23, 2009, alongside Veronica Cartwright who had been in the original 1987 movie also based upon the novel. On February 25, 2009, Lindsay Price became the third to land a role, with Johann Urb and Jon Bernthal both announced on March 5, 2009. Rebecca Romjin was the last of the core three Witches to be cast, on March 9. Sara Rue was cast on March 10, Ashley Benson on March 22, Paul Gross on June 13, and finally Matt Dallas on July 30, 2009.

Rosanna Arquette landed a 2-episode stint, reported on September 23, 2009 and announced for the November 18 and 25 episodes. Rebecca Romijn's real life husband, Jerry O'Connell has also landed a role on Eastwick, playing a love interest for Jamie Ray Newman's character as a widowed father of a young son with a secret.

Characters

Actor	Character	Year	Notes
Current Cast Members
Rebecca Romijn	Roxanne Torcoletti	2009-present	Based on the character Alexandra..
Lindsay Price	Joanna Frankel	2009-present	Based on the character Jane..
Jaime Ray Newman	Kat Gardener	2009-present	Based on the character Sukie.
Paul Gross	Darryl Van Horne	2009-present	Based on the character Daryl.
Sara Rue	Penny Higgins	2009-present	Joanna's best friend.
Ashley Benson	Mia Torcoletti	2009-present	Roxie's daughter.
Jon Bernthal	Raymond Gardener	2009-present	Kat's husband and father to her five kids.
Johann Urb	Will St. David	2009-present	Joanna's and Kat's love interest.
Veronica Cartwright	Bun Waverly	2009-present	Local of the town who is also a Witch.
Jack Huston	Jamie	2009-present	Roxie's mysterious neighbor.
Darren Criss	Josh	2009-present	Mia's love interest and Chad's brother.
Former Cast Members
Matt Dallas	Chad	2009	Roxie's ex-boyfriend.

Main characters

• Roxanne "Roxie" Torcoletti (Rebecca Romijn) is the bohemian working mother of Mia Torcoletti, a widow who shared a love with a younger man named Chad. People in Eastwick suspected Roxie of killing her husband, Danny Torcoletti, but it's obvious that she loved Danny as she had kept his clothes in a drawer in her bedroom. Roxie's powers include premonition, getting visions of the future in which Roxie tries to work out and sometimes has to stop the calamity from happening, but soon discovers that she can't change destiny. She also displays vocal persuasion, in which she accidentally uses to make something bad happen, such as the death of Gus and the choking of the fake psychic. When Chad dies, she is torn and tries to follow the signs Chad had forewarned in a dream, and gets disinvited to his funeral because the people of Eastwick think she is cursed, as does Roxie. Roxie owns an art store, where she creates and sells artwork, and has had several visions of the man who lives upstairs, Jamie, killing her.

• Joanna Frankel (Lindsay Price) is a shy reporter who has a dramatic crush on her ex-collegue, Will St. David, and her best friend is Penny Higgins, as well as Roxie Torcoletti and Kat Gardener. When she worked at the Eastwick Gazette, she found it hard to impress her employer, Clyde, until she caught the town's priest, Father Dunn, at a whorehouse, which made front page news. This sparked anger in Father Dunn, who then seeked revenge towards Joanna. Later, he gets his revenge by locking Joanna in a coffin and putting it on the bonfire on Halloween, leaving her to burn to her death, until she is saved by Kat and Will. Her powers include hypnotism, where she controls men to do what she wants with her hypnotizing eyes, but doesn't work on women, and telekinesis, to move objects with her mind. Joanna is fired from the Eastwick Gazette when she runs a story about Darryl Van Horne which appears to be false. She is scared of heights. Her ex-fiance comes to Eastwick, and instead of going on a date with Will, Joanna has sex with him. Will soon finds out and is upset and angry, but moves on to Kat Gardener.

• Kat Gardener (Jamie Ray Newman) is a mother of five, married to Raymond Gardener who appears the stereotype of the lazy, drunken husband. Kat is unhappy in her relationship with Raymond, and after Kat got scared that Raymond kidnapped the kids, she decides to divorce him. However, she changed her mind and set up an agreement with Will that the two would try bird-nesting, that they would separate and their kids would live with them both for periods of time. Kat displayes the powers to manipulate Mother Nature, and when angry or upset, she can cause natural disasters, and has also shown the power to heal. Kat's secret ambition was to sing on top of a piano, which she did during the "crazy moon", where she accidentally set the place on fire, and kissed Joanna's sweetheart, Will. Kat also saved Joanna from being burned alive by making it rain. Kat is also a nurse at the Eastwick Hospital.

Series synopsis

Season one began airing on September 23, 2009 and introduces three women - Roxanne Torcoletti, Joanna Frankel, and Kat Gardener. They hardly know each other, but meet at a wishing fountain and make three different wishes that interlink and bring trouble to the town of Eastwick. A man named Darryl Van Horne has moved into the town and has an unusual interest in the women and soon befriends them and teaches them about their magical abilities.

Reception

Eastwick opened with initially mixed reviews. Metacritic has given the series 49 out of 100 based on the pilot episode, based upon 20 critical reviews, and a user score of 7.6 out of 10 based on 133 votes. Entertainment Weekly gave the pilot episode a B, stating the show "plays like Desperate Housewives if the Wisteria Lane ladies liked prestidigitation instead of poker." Variety was also favorable by saying "the pilot represents a polished product that neatly introduces an array of characters and establishes Eastwick as a project with no small measure of potential." Boston Globe gave the show a more positive review, even though he still compared it to Desperate Housewives, but said, "Desperate Housewives is frustrating because it can’t seem to decide what it is: murder mystery, silly farce, or realistic look at domestic woes. Eastwick is allegory and knows it, so it can be plausibly silly and over-the-top, and hint at real issues - women in the workplace, gender politics at home - without trying too hard ... I’ll take witch hazel over wisteria any day."

According to Tiffany Connors on the New York Post, Eastwick is the best new fall show of 2009, by giving it a Grade A-, the highest score for any of the new shows she graded.

"Eastwick" has recently been compared to both "Gilmore Girls" and "Charmed," two of the previous WB shows. Since "Eastwick" is filmed on what previously was the "Gilmore Girls" set, there are multiple similarities between the town of Eastwick and Stars Hollow. The three female witches, one with the power of premonition and one with the power of telekinesis, hold similar to those powers possessed on "Charmed."

Seasonal ratings

Season	Timeslot (EDT)	Season Premiere	Season Finale	TV Season	Rank	Viewers (in millions)
1	Wednesday 10:00 P.M.	September 23, 2009	Spring, 2010	2009 - 2010	TBA	5.91 to date

Ratings

Eastwick premiered with 8.53 million viewers, coming second in its timeslot, beaten only by CSI: New York. Excluding only Lost premieres and finales, Eastwick produced ABC's highest viewers and young adult numbers in the time period with regular programming in almost 2 years - since October 17, 2007 and October 24, 2007, respectively. The September 30 episode dropped 1.91 million viewers from the pilot, and scored 6.62 million. Though it dropped in ratings, other shows that night also dropped the same amount. Growing from its week-ago series debut by 8%, Eastwick won its time period among Women 18-34, beating CSI: NY in the hour by 12% (2.8/8 vs. 2.5/8). The October 7 episode was opposite CBS' time-period veteran "CSI: NY," ABC's freshman "Eastwick" earned second place in the 10 o'clock hour, defeating NBC's "Jay Leno" for the 3rd week in a row among Adults 18-49 (1.8/5 vs. 1.7/5), but placed No. 1 in its hour with Women 18-34 (2.0/6-tie) for its 2nd consecutive telecast. The October 14 episode beat out NBC's "Jay Leno" in Adults 18-34 (+15% - 1.5/5 vs. 1.3/4) and for the 3rd week in a row across each of the key Women demos (W18-34/W18-49/W25-54). It also grew its audience week to week in both Adults 18-34 (+7% - 1.5/5 vs. 1.4/4) and Adults 25-54 (+5% - 2.1/5 vs. 2.0/5). The October 21 episode defeated NBC's "Jay Leno" in Adults 18-49 (+13% - 1.7/5 vs. 1.5/4), and was also seeing bumps from first-reported numbers through DVR playback, surging by 1.1 million viewers and by an additional 4-tenths of an Adult 18-49 rating point from the initially reported Live + Same Day Numbers to the Live + 7 Day DVR finals. The October 28 episode continued to beat NBC's "Jay Leno" in the 10 o'clock hour, leading by 20% this week among Adults 18-49 (1.8/5 vs. 1.5/4), and built its Adult 18-49 audience by 13% over the prior week (1.8/5 vs. 1.6/4), tallying its best number in 3 weeks. It also saw bumps from the first-reported numbers through DVR playback, surging by 1.0 million viewers and by an additional 4-tenths of an Adult 18-49 rating point from the initially reported Live + Same Day Numbers to the Live + 7 Day DVR finals. The November 5 episode continued to beat NBC's "Jay Leno" in the 10 o'clock hour (3 weeks in a row), leading by an even wider margin of 23% this week among Adults 18-49 (1.6/4 vs. 1.3/4), and saw bumps from the first-reported numbers through DVR playback, averaging an additional 1.0 million viewers and a 4-tenths of an Adult 18-49 rating point increase from the initially reported Live + Same Day Numbers to the Live + 7 Day DVR finals.

Previous versions

There have been two previous unsold pilots for television adaptations of The Witches of Eastwick. The first adaption was an for NBC in 1992, starring Julia Campbell as Jane Hollis, Catherine Mary Stewart as Sukie Ridgemont, Ally Walker as Alexandra Spofford, Michael Siberry as Darryl Van Horne, and Jan Rubes as Fidel (Carel Struycken's character in the film).

The second unsold pilot was for Fox in 2002, starring Marcia Cross as Jane Spofford, Kelly Rutherford as Alexandra Medford, Lori Loughlin as Sukie Ridgemont, and Jason O'Mara as Darryl Van Horne.

The Witches of Eastwick (1987)	The Witches of Eastwick (1992)	Eastwick (2002)	Eastwick (2009)
Cher as Alexandra Medford	Ally Walker as Alexandra Spofford	Kelly Rutherford as Alexandra Medford	Rebecca Romijn as Roxanne Torcoletti
Susan Sarandon as Jane Spofford	Julia Campbell as Jane Hollis	Marcia Cross as Jane Spofford	Lindsay Price as Joanna Frankel
Michelle Pfeiffer as Sukie Ridgemont	Catherine Mary Stewart as Sukie Ridgemont	Lori Loughlin as Sukie Ridgemont	Jaime Ray Newman as Kat Gardener
Jack Nicholson as Daryl Van Horne	Michael Siberry as Darryl Van Horne	Jason O'Mara as Daryl Van Horne	Paul Gross as Daryl Van Horne

International airdates

Country / Region	Network(s)	Premiere
Vorlage:Flagicon Canada	A	September 25, 2009
Vorlage:Flagicon UK	Hallmark Channel	November 24, 2009
Vorlage:Flagicon The Netherlands	RTL 5	TBA
Vorlage:Flagicon Australia	Nine Network	TBA

External links

• Vorlage:Official
• Vorlage:Imdb title
• Vorlage:Tv.com show
• List of Eastwick Episodes. TVGuide; abgerufen im 1. Januar 1