Here’s what the critics are saying…

Third in line was The Secret Circle. Fifteen minutes in I wrote in my notes: Harry Potter meets Gossip Girl. Which – though simplistic – gets your head about 75% of the way there. Teenaged girl Cassie is out and about when a mysterious man approaches her home, performing little acts of symbolic magic: pouring a bottle of water out on the street causes the plumbing in the house to go haywire, and lighting matches sets the house ablaze, killing her mother. One month later, we see Cassie moving in with her grandmother (her father died before she was born) in the town her mom grew up in, and – like Harry Potter – everyone seems to know her, even people she’s never met. Turns out: almost everyone in town is a witch, Cassie’s mom was a witch, and Cassie’s a witch too.

I can’t tell if The Secret Circle is about being a girl in high school with a little bit of magic added, or about witches with a little bit of adolescent female drama added – because while often it’s evenly blended, it also spends a lot of time being purely one or the other. When adults are screen without the kids, it feels closer to something like a True Blood (though decidedly less sexy or scary); when it’s just the tykes, it can sometimes feel more like 90210. Likewise, while the show itself looks well-produced and slick, it also felt inconsistent: sometimes interesting with decent acting, other times feeling and sounding like dumb teenaged girl fanfiction. Take my favorite line, spoken of the show’s bitchy girl: “Faye’s always been a bit unpredictable. You never know what she’s going to do next.” But then it will throw in something charming enough that even a grown man – presumably well outside of the show’s target audience – can forgive the clunkiness. I will say this: it’s easy to watch, and while the audience snorted at a few scenes (Cassie’s bedroom window lining up with that of the often-shirtless boy across the way was ripe for mockery), people seemed to enjoy it overall. In short: fun, albeit derivative and shallow.

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Last year, my first official Comic-Con experience was the Preview Night screening of the series premiere of The CW’s Nikita. This year, SDCC topped itself by offering not one, but three series pilots, along with a look at a Japanese animated take on a popular U.S. TV series. While Alcatraz, The Secret Circle, and Supernatural: The Anime Series were all entertaining, CBS’ upcoming procedural Person of Interest won the night.

Based on L. J. Smith’s novels, this new CW drama follows a teen girl named Cassie (Britt Robertson) who goes to live with her grandmother after her mother dies in a mysterious fire. She’s quickly drawn in by a group of witches who believe she’s meant to be a part of their circle. And so begins your typical teen drama with a magical twist. Dangers lurk not far in the distance as these kids begin to dabble in powers that might have them in over their heads very soon.

My guess is that The Vampire Diaries fans are going to be on board with this one. The pilot was a little campy at parts, but it does offer a similar kind of glamorous danger to some of the other supernatural-themed TV dramas out there. Fans of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles may recognize Thomas Dekker, playing one of the teens that befriends Cassie.

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