'Domino Day: Lone Witch' Is a Propulsive Series Worth Feeding On

If you’re looking for a sexy, BIPOC-led, mile-a-minute witch series set in present-day North England – something audiences should always be looking for at all times – you could do a lot worse than Domino Day: Lone Witch. The six-part first season (a second season has yet to be announced) launched in the U.K. in January (where it was just titled Domino Day) as part of BBC3, a smaller channel for the nationalized broadcaster that specializes in youth-oriented programming. Historically, if a show was hip, genre-blending, and eye-catching, it would likely be on BBC3 – think Being Human, Torchwood, or In the Flesh.

It’s clear with that in mind that Domino Day is an attempt to relaunch that buzzy, smarmy, thrilling tradition for the recently revamped channel, so let’s hope that enough of an overseas crowd latch onto its sparky, entertaining modern fantasy on AMC+ (I mean, it’s not like anything blows up on Sundance Now, the other streamer you can watch it on). It certainly deserves your time – a brisk dip into the covert witch hierarchy of Manchester through the eyes of outcast witch Domino (Siena Kelly), whose succubus-type powers attract unwanted attention from a local coven looking to stay in the good books of punitive witch elders.

We meet Domino alone in a bar that’s trendy but “wanky” (commit this descriptor to memory if you ever want to truly understand the British lexicon) – it immediately doesn’t seem like her vibe, something picked up on by the flirty barman Leon (Percelle Ascott). That’s because she’s going on low-profile first dates with shitty men so she can “feed” off them – a violent process that looks like she’s sucking a glowing snake from their mouth to hers. This is not normal and alerts her lone wolf presence to a female coven operating from a nearby plant store – led by Kat (Alisha Bailey), whose subservience to the witch elder Esme (Lucy Cohu) means suppressing her inherited practice of Caribbean witchcraft. 

From the off, it’s clear there are scisms amongst the witches, and the elders bearing down on Kat may be connected to Silas (Sam Howard-Sneyd), Domino’s mysterious, bad boy ex, without either witch knowing it.

After a whirlwind first episode where exciting chemistry is followed by dangerous sexual encounters and explosive witch rituals, Domino Day continues to barrel through its brief 42-minute long episodes towards an overwhelming confrontation, with the stakes rising and falling every time Domino thinks she’s found a new equilibrium, only for it to shatter in front of her. Kelly puts in a stellar performance as Domino, channeling the character’s duality of confidence and distress and flicking between the polar emotions with ease. 

The voices that fill up the supporting cast bounce off Kelly’s captivating presence with the right blend of fantasy gravitas and sparky charm, most notably babirye bukilwa as Sammie, the member of Kat’s coven most sympathetic to Domino’s plight, and Howard-Sneyd as Silas, whose obsession with pruning Domino’s power got him banished somewhere unknown to everyone.

Domino Day is propulsive and economical with its crisscrossing storylines but scripted in a way where the performer’s personality gets to shine, even if little non-plot-relevant characterization is given airtime. This is probably the biggest issue with the series: at just over four hours in total, it’s ruthlessly structured like a film, complete with a snappy and well-signposted inciting incident, escalation of stakes, points-of-no-return throughout each act. 

You don’t need to know the ins and outs of Robert McKee’s story to understand the narrative design of writer and creator Lauren Sequeira’s series. Each episode is just the next movement in one big story, leading unwaveringly towards a fixed conclusion.

What’s the problem with this? It means Domino Day often feels restrained by story beats when it could be exploring deeper character nuance from the expansive fantasy setting. World-building is overhyped as a necessity for otherworld stories like this, but Domino Day’s portrait of underground witchdom feels scant and bare because we’re stuck on a railroad of plot that moves and feels like a film. 

Domino Day would not be better if it were edited down to a feature film. The fizzing emotions of our protagonist, the glances we get into how people live with the covert presence of witches, Domino’s gestating conflicts of being drawn between two worlds while in the dark about her own past – these are all things that are present in the released show, but aren’t given the dramatic attention needed, meaning Domino’s story and environment never resonate as much as they should. 

As a consequence, the finale feels rushed, and the repercussions of Domino’s transformation throughout the series are glossed over. For a series that so ably communicates the immediate feelings of being a witch on the run without turning silly or phony, the arresting but compromised Domino Day is sorely lacking room to breathe.

Domino Day: Lone Witch premieres Thursday, June 27, with two episodes streaming on Sundance Now and AMC+. One episode a week will follow on Thursdays through July 25, 2024.