Charmed
Three sisters, one Book of Shadows, and the Power of Three. Charmed premiered on The WB on October 7, 1998, to 7.7 million viewers, the network's biggest debut ever, and ran eight seasons through 2006, surviving the exit of its eldest sister to become, for a while, the longest-running hour-long show with all-female leads in American TV history.
Created by Constance M. Burge and produced by Aaron Spelling's company with Brad Kern as showrunner, Charmed put three sisters in a Victorian manor in San Francisco (the exterior was really at 1329 Carroll Avenue in Los Angeles): Prue (Shannen Doherty), Piper (Holly Marie Combs), and Phoebe (Alyssa Milano). Phoebe finds the Book of Shadows in the attic, its inscription wakes their powers once all three are back under one roof, and the Power of Three goes to work protecting innocents from demons and warlocks. The producers' mantra was "three sisters who happen to be witches, not three witches who happen to be sisters," and the theme, Love Spit Love's cover of The Smiths' "How Soon Is Now?", set the tone. The pilot, "Something Wicca This Way Comes," drew 7.72 million viewers, the highest-rated debut in The WB's history.
It averaged around five million viewers a season for its first three years. Then it lost its eldest sister. Doherty left at the end of season three in 2001, reportedly over on-set and off-set tensions with Milano, and Prue died in "All Hell Breaks Loose," an episode Doherty herself directed. Rose McGowan arrived in season four as Paige Matthews, the half-sister who restored the Power of Three, after Tiffani Thiessen and Jennifer Love Hewitt had been considered. Brian Krause's Leo Wyatt and Julian McMahon's Cole Turner filled out the cast through the middle years.
Ratings slid to 3.5 million by seasons seven and eight, but the run earned a record: in January 2006, after "Payback's a Witch," Charmed became the longest-running hour-long series in American television history with all-female leads, a mark Desperate Housewives passed in 2012. The finale, "Forever Charmed," aired May 21, 2006, to 4.49 million viewers after 178 episodes. The story continued in Zenescope's Season 9 comic from 2010, and The CW's 2018 reboot ran four seasons; when a remake was first floated in 2013, McGowan's reaction was "They really are running out of ideas in Hollywood."
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