If you are even remotely witch-pilled, Sanctuary: A Witch’s Tale feels like an easy sell. Drop it into spooky season, add a murder mystery, and let a supposedly progressive town slowly reveal its uglier instincts. Consider me hooked. What initially plays as a cozy, small-town crime drama quickly curdles into something more pointed and uncomfortable, using witchcraft less as a genre gimmick and more as a social stress test.
The series kicks off with the sudden death of Dan Whithall, the town’s beloved rugby golden boy. In the aftermath, grief needs a target, and Elaine Cassidy’s Sarah Fenn, a modern-day witch living quietly on the margins, becomes the obvious one. Cassidy gives Sarah a grounded, weary humanity that keeps the character from drifting into mystical archetype territory. She is not spooky for show. She is simply existing, and that ends up being enough to make her dangerous in the eyes of a community desperate for answers.
Hazel Doupe is a standout as Harper, Sarah’s teenage daughter, who feels the ripple effects of suspicion at school and at home. The show smartly understands that witch hunts do not just burn the accused. They scorch everyone nearby. Amy De Bhrún’s Abigail, Dan’s mother and once Sarah’s closest friend, brings an emotionally volatile performance that walks the line between sympathetic and deeply unsettling. Stephanie Levi-John’s DCI Maggie Knight rounds out the ensemble, offering a police procedural lens that is complicated by bias, pressure, and the unspoken politics of keeping the peace in a town on edge.
What Sanctuary does best is slow-burning tension. This is not a twist-every-five-minutes kind of show. Instead, it lets paranoia seep in gradually, building an atmosphere where every look and rumor feels loaded. The magic exists, but it stays largely in the background. The real horror here is social, watching how quickly tolerance evaporates when fear takes over. At times, the pacing leans more atmospheric than propulsive, which may test viewers looking for constant narrative fireworks, but the thematic payoff makes the patience worthwhile.
By the time the season wraps, Sanctuary: A Witch’s Tale proves itself less interested in spellcasting than in asking who gets protected and who gets sacrificed when a community feels threatened. With Season 1 now available on DVD, it comes highly recommended for fans of moody crime dramas, modern folk horror, and witch stories that care more about people than potions. Light a candle, press play, and watch a town reveal exactly who it is when the gloves come off.
Jessie Hobson