A new broom sweeps clean, especially in the hands of a good witch.
What had been Hallmark Channel’s most popular movie franchise is now its fourth original series. “Good Witch” premieres Saturday, Feb. 28, and Cassie Nightingale continues to conjure up feel-good moments.
Catherine Bell reprises the role she played in the seven TV movies, and after years on “JAG” and “Army Wives,” says she’s thrilled to live in Cassie’s skin.
“Because doing the movies are one-off things, Cassie was almost, I felt, she was kind of so perfect, how do we turn that into a series and watch it every week and not have it become annoying?” Bell says. “I feel like we added elements that made it watchable on a weekly basis.”
Now a widow, she’s rearing her daughter and has a new neighbor, Dr. Sam Radford (James Denton). The additional characters give Cassie potential for clashes. Her daughter is a teenager and the doctor, a Johns Hopkins-trained surgeon, doesn’t think much of Cassie’s homeopathy. Of course, he’s also the potential love interest.
The toddler from the last film is now a high school freshman. In the two-hour pilot, Grace (Bailee Madison) discovers she has some of her mom’s special powers.
Madison had not seen the movies when she took this part, and has fallen under the show’s spell.
“The main basis is finding the best in others,” she says. “You have Cassie, who is really, really gifted, who wants to go out of her way to bring joy to others people’s lives. And a mother-daughter relationship that are in different stages of their lives. It is about hope and love and joy and coming together at the end of the day.”
