Switch

[Perdita]

ITV2 has announced new supernatural drama Switch.

Lacey Turner (EastEnders, Being Human) will star in the series, which will follow four female flatmates who are secretly witches.

She is joined by Nina Toussaint-White (Doctor Who), Hannah Tointon (The Inbetweeners) and Phoebe Fox (Black Mirror).

Turner will play "immaculately dressed" careerist Stella, while Toussaint-White has been cast as "sexy and stylish" fashionista Jude.

The group's moral compass Grace will be played by Fox, with Tointon starring as the "restless" and "spontaneous" Hannah.

The 'Witches of Camden' must face the challenges of living in contemporary London, as well as their sworn enemies the 'Witches of Kensington', Alexa, India, Romola and Remy.

Switch has been written by Chloe Moss (Prisoners' Wives) and Tim Price (Secret Diary of a Call Girl).

"Switch is a contemporary series about friendship with a spell-binding twist," said ITV's Laura Mackie. "Chloe and Tim have created four fun-loving, free-spirited characters and we're delighted with the direction the series takes."

Produced by Being Human's Philip Trethowan and executive produced by Touchpaper's Rob Pursey, six 60-minute episodes of Switch will go into production in London, Cardiff and Bristol for 11 weeks from April 2012.

[tammyy2j]

Sounds like a UK rematch of US show The Secret Circle

[Caspiant]

It also souds similar to Charmed.

[tammyy2j]

http://www.denofgeek.com/tv/switch/2...s-itv2s-switch

New UK supernatural comedy-drama Switch is due on our screens next month, and here’s a little taste of what to expect…

From ITV2, home to the now-liquidated Katie Price/Peter Andre merger and The Only Way Is Essex, Switch’s channel-fellows may not be geek-friendly, but its pedigree certainly is. Produced by Being Human’s Philip Trethowan, co-written by Misfits producer Chloe Moss, and with a young cast who’ve popped up in The Fades, Doctor Who, Bedlam, and Being Human, Switch is a light-hearted spin on UK supernatural drama, and a surprising amount of fun.

Remember when Sabrina The Teenage Witch went to college but her storylines remained firmly in Junior High? Switch has the same daft approach to magic (no-one’s going all veiny Willow or The Craft psychotic in this show), but its characters engage in all the sex and swearing you’d expect from four early twenty-somethings. It’s a kind of Sabrina The Teenage Witch: After Hours without the talking cat, if you like.

The new six-episode series is a fluffy romp through the life of a Camden-based coven of 21st century white witches Stella (Lacey Turner), Jude (Nina Toussaint-White), Hannah (Hannah Tointon), and Grace (Phoebe Fox). The cast are comely types rather than Weird Sisters, and with a career-minded suited one, a hussy fashionista one, a hippie traveller one, and a sweet ‘n’ innocent one, the aesthetic is Spice Girls meets Sex And The City, if Scary, Ginger, Carrie and co. blew their student loans on WKDs and Topshop harem pants.

Each of the witches represents an element that handily provides a summation of their character: Stella is Earth - headstrong and reliable, Hannah is Air - floaty and insubstantial, Jude is Fire – feisty and hedonistic, and Grace is Water - useful, but a bit wet. The quartet is unable to conjure unless all four are present, a narrative trick which provides a neat analogy for teen friendship groups pulling apart as they transition into adulthood, when sleepovers and hair-braiding are swapped for the realities of flat-sharing and bill-paying.

Teens are very much the target audience for Switch, young female teens to be precise. The Switch crew are firmly hos before bros, and their supportive, affectionate friendship refreshingly deals in none of the back-stabbing, sabotaging bull**** too often seen between young women on screen.

Some girl-on-girl hostility does exist to spur the narrative along, when a class-based conflict has the down-to-earth Camden crew targeted by a filthy rich Kensington coven channelling Made In Chelsea. Overall though, the plots are kept light and mostly comic, with a healthy sense of their own ridiculousness.

That’s the element that separates Switch from The Secret Circle, Charmed, and even Buffy The Vampire Slayer - a show that had a peerless sense of humour but always foregrounded the dark, consequence-y side of magic use. Switch takes its magical elements with a good pinch of silliness, using them to accelerate and amplify the day-to-day realities of its characters’ lives (over-protective mums, horrible bosses, love objects who don’t notice them), rather than to form the show’s be-all-and-end-all.

The escapist element of conjuring spells to fix life’s little troubles - which, if the series continues in the vein of episode one, never goes exactly to plan - is enjoyable too, if a little familiar. The SFX budget may be noticeably tight (perhaps the producers could have used the same bank balance-expanding spell the girls must have used to pay the rent on their cavernous Camden flat?), but that shouldn’t unduly put off the fans Switch is targeting.

Essentially, Switch is a teen comedy soap with a good few laughs and an emotional bent. Its young cast is mostly very decent - Phoebe Fox and Lacey Turner the stand-outs at this stage - and its writing has a fun, decidedly British feel. Though it’s frothier than Being Human and nowhere as near the knuckle as Misfits, it’s original UK genre TV and as such, we welcome it with open arms.

Switch is due to air on ITV2 next month.

[tammyy2j]

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[alan45]

It also souds similar to Charmed.

Just as you sound familiar to N Fan

[alan45]

..

[Caspiant]

Just as you sound familiar to N Fan

Just as you sound familiar to Parkerman.

[alan45]

Just as you sound familiar to Packerman.

Who is Packerman????

[alan45]

Just as you sound familiar to Packerman.

Who is Packerman????