'Witches of East End' review: Shifting tone

But the game is (pretty much) the same. Artist mom Joanna Beauchamp (Julia Ormond) celebrates the engagement of her bubbly bartender daughter, Freya (Jenna Dewan Tatum, Channing's wife), to storied-family heir and do-good doctor Dash Gardiner (Eric Winter, "The Mentalist"). Her librarian daughter, Ingrid (Rachel Boston, "In Plain Sight"), is a history buff with interests in the occult and the local police detective (Jason George).

Then Dash's mysterious brother (model Daniel DiTomasso) arrives, instantly mesmerizing a baffled Freya. And Joanna's spirited sister

(Mädchen Amick) drops in -- "I know you've been angry at me these past hundred years" -- to remind Joanna of the witchly powers she's passed on to her unaware girls. And all hell breaks loose, perhaps literally, but certainly figuratively, in the form of local murders, resurrections and more.

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Yes, "Witches" wants to be all jauntily self-aware, but can't quite conjure this cleverness consistently. Sunday's pilot has to cram in lots of coming-up clues about tunnels under the Gardiner mansion, and pastcentury revenge-seekers trapped in painted portraits, and eternal-life exceptions that allow these witches to die, except when they don't.

What's utterly clear is that the starter hour picks up steam whenever loose-cannon Amick bops around -- although Ormond does a nice job of grounding its shenanigans in a semblance of reality.

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