TV show that’s hard to ignore

Facebook algorithms kept pushing these clips up my feed. And each time, I would scroll past them. 'Motherland: Fort Salem'. I wasn’t exactly keen on watching another mediocre fantasy show. Not after the kind I had suffered through in the past.

I’ve always found most fantasy shows, especially the witchy ones, too ambitious to sustain an entertaining storyline. Even a fantasy show needs to have a certain level of truth to compel the audience to suspend their disbelief long enough to enjoy the story. And most fantasy shows almost always fall short of this unique element. Especially with the ridiculous monsters in every episode and unbelievable good vs evil battles that serve to bore the audience more than build the plot.

But then this past weekend, with nothing much to do with my life, and having had enough of reading comments of people asking Cherera’s fake Facebook account why she wanted to steal Hustler’s votes, I tapped play on this video on Facebook. And that’s how I found myself writing this four days later.

It was a clip of this scene where General Sarah Alder (Lyne Renee) is dying, and the Bellweather unit is saying their last goodbyes. When it is Tally Craven’s (Jessica Sutton) turn, she says, “I’m beginning to understand the burden those choices placed on you. And I don’t know how you carried it for all these years. But I want you to know that you can set it down now. We will carry it from here.”

Mahn, with a dialogue like this, I knew I was roped in! I had to watch ‘Motherland: Fort Salem’ even if it’s the last thing I do. For the whole weekend, it was the only thing I did.

The lead cast of this show is an ensemble of brilliant, talented and diverse artistes who are not only fascinating to watch but have built this friendship and respect for one another that ripples throughout the show. It is three seasons of a love story. Friendship. Growth. Purpose and power. And voices coming together to defeat a common enemy.

‘Motherland: Fort Salem’ is set in an alternative America. In this alternative timeline, the 17th-century burning of witches in Salem did not happen. Instead, humans made a pact with the witches, sparing their lives in exchange for the witches joining the army to fight the British.

And thus the Salem Pact came to be. A binding agreement that has real power and consequences should it ever be broken by either party. The witch bloodlines had to give up their 18-year-old daughters in perpetuity, for training in the military arts. The trained witch-soldiers would then serve for life, protecting America from all her enemies.

Other nations, to combat American military power, also recruited their witches to their militaries. The series begins in the present, almost 400 years after the Salem pact.

The witch military, an integral part of American security, is headed by none other than General Sarah Alder, a very powerful witch more than 300 years old. The show centres on three young witches, Tally, Abigail and Raelle, as they enter basic training in magic combat.

Tally Craven is idealistic and naïve in a rather beautiful way, and at first encounter, seems to be excited about everything. The show’s creator, Eliot Laurence, describes her as “the stubborn gladness against the furnaces of this world”.

Abigail Bellweather (Ashley Williams) is a witch military royalty from the revered and powerful Bellweather matrilineal family. Her mother is a powerful general and the head of military intelligence. Her mother’s mother, all the way to the originator of the matrilineal, were all war heroes and powerful military generals. As such, Abigail is very privileged and powerful and possesses a rather solid streak for leadership.

Raelle Collar (Taylor Hickson) is the outsider in this trio and the military in general. She comes from an unusual part of this society in that her military witch mother married outside the military, to a civilian human. Now, this is highly frowned upon in the witch society, which is concerned with keeping the purity of the witch bloodlines and highly detests human-witch marriages.

The first thing you notice when you dive into this witchy drama is that it’s unlike any other witchy show you’ve ever watched. For one, these witches don’t do strange Latin incantations to cast spells. Lawrence describes it as fantasy through a sci-fi lens. Spells here are not cast by incantations or summoning demons but by emitting very precise sounds, using their voices to hit a perfect frequency that does stuff.

The witches are capable of emitting these precise sounds, which they call songs or seeds, due to a biological advantage that gives them additional vocal cords. When harnessed properly, these abilities are so powerful they move mountains, tear into walls and create storms and infernos. They can also heal; some have telepathic abilities, while others can see future and past events.

In training, the witches aren’t only taught how to harness their powers but are also engaged in rigorous physical combat training, making them very potent fighters, even without their powers.   

As far as the fantasy world is concerned, this show is a breath of fresh air. And whatever hurdle we encounter in this life…“We will meet it, with storm and fury,” just like the witches of ‘Motherland: Fort Salem’.