Eastwick was a Dramedy premiering on ABC for their 2009 fall line-up. The show is inspired both by the John Updike novel, The Witches of Eastwick, and the previous film version of the same name.
Roxie, Joanna, and Kat are all residents of Eastwick, but have never really interacted. Roxie lost her husband and now has a reputation of a man-eater, mostly because she is seeing a younger man. Joanna is a wannabe Lois Lane, a budding journalist with a hopeless crush on her co-worker, Will. Rounding out the group, Kat is a mother and a wife in a nearly-loveless marriage to her high school sweetheart. The three are drawn together during a harvest festival, when they all make a wish at the local fountain.
Afterward, strange things beginning happening in Eastwick. A mysterious millionare, Darryl Van Horne, arrives in a cloud of scandal and begins buying up the town. And the three women, soon becoming fast friends, discover they each possess powerful new gifts. Roxie is able to see the future, Joanna can hypnotize men with a look, and Kat has power over the elements.
The show has been compared to both Desperate Housewives and Sex and the City with magic. The series was canceled due to poor ratings, leaving several episodes unaired on the network (although in Britain the entire series was run by the Hallmark Channel... and again when they became the Universal Channel).
This show provides examples of:
- Adaptation Name Change: The three leads are loosely based on the originals in the 1987 movie and the 1984 book that inspired it, but Alexandra became Roxie, Sukie became Joanna, and Jane became Kat.
- Back from the Dead: Darryl, sort of, as well as Danny and Jamie in the last episode.
- Bigger Is Better in Bed: Darryl, according to Roxie.
- Black Comedy Rape:
- Joanna, in an attempt to prove that she's not interested in Max, flirts with another guy at a party. When the other guy starts to back off, she uses her mind control to get him to sleep with her. Turns out that not only is the guy gay, he's in a committed relationship. It's made 100% clear that the guy would never have had sex with Joanna voluntarily, yet it's played as a 'oh, that silly Joanna and her bad luck with men!' moment.
- Roxie makes a vague allusion to Prison Rape when she tells Jamie that he's "a little too pretty for prison":
Roxie: With those doe eyes and that accent, you'll be one sought-after cellmate. - Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Roxie is blonde, Joanna is brunette, and Kat is a redhead.
- Body Horror: When Eleanor does acupuncture on Bun, millions of red ants come pouring out of her body. Holy shit.
- Buffy Speak: Penny, occasionally: "And I want that...blood hair to be...DNA'd for—for stuff!"
- Buried Alive: Jamie's fate.
- Creepy Child: Gene, Colin's son...except it's not really him, it's an evil presence of some sort controlling his body.
- Demonic Possession: Gene. Whatever's inside him wants to get into Kat because of her powers.
- Dreaming of Things to Come: Roxie's gift is having premonitions in her dreams.
- Eating the Eye Candy: When Darryl strips naked in front of her, Roxie can't help but stare.
- Elemental Powers: So far, Kat has electrocuted her husband with a lightning strike and frozen a swimming pool solid. She then also almost kills her ex's date with a gust of wind.
- Girl on Girl Is Hot: Penny kisses Joanna when affected by the crazy, horny moon phenomenon.
- Healing Hands: Kat later developed the ability to heal injuries and illnesses. However it becomes clear that overuse of this power was taxing and she would require massive amounts of sleep to recover.
- Hollywood Provincialism: Investigations are done by the local Sheriff. In Rhode Island, as well as most New England counties, Sheriffs are ceremonial positions.
- Hypnotic Eyes: Joanna can control people by staring into their yes but they only work on men.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each title had two linked items, sometimes rhyming ("Mooning and Crooning," "Pampered and Tampered") and sometimes not ("Red Ants and Black Widows," "Magic Snow and Creepy Gene").
- I Got You a Drawer: Roxie gives Chad a drawer at one point, though it's not clear if she still has a drawer for her ex-husband as well.
- Legacy Team: It becomes apparent later on in the series that Kat, Joanna and Roxie aren't the only witches in Eastwick and the older generation of witches have the same powers as they did. Kat shares hers with Eleanor, Roxie with Bonnie and Joanna with the late Gloria.
- Mind over Matter: Joanna soon develops telekinetic abilities but hasn't quite mastered it requiring great effort and concentration just to move small objects.
- Naked Freak-Out: Kat has one when Gene walks in on her just after she discarded her Modesty Towel.
- Perfect Poison: Inverted when Eleanor tries to kill Max, Joanna and Kat—it takes hours and hours to work, slowly paralyzing its victims, and no one dies anyway.
- Rape as Drama: In an early episode, Roxie's daughter, Mia, is nearly raped by her boyfriend. Fortunately Roxie and Daryl arrive Just in Time to save her.
- Seers: Roxie starts out the series with clairvoyance, primarily precognition.
- Telepathy: Roxie's clairvoyance soon grows into outright telepathy.
