'Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches' should be an unhinged, creepy Gothic delight. It is not

You don’t want to tick off Rowan Fielding.

Bad things tend to happen if you do.

Rowan, played by Alexandra Daddario, is a neurosurgeon balancing several challenges. In addition to the usual pressure her job brings, her adoptive mother Ellie (Erica Gimpel) is dying of cancer and her boss is a jerk.

That doesn’t work out well for him. While he’s dressing down Rowan for imaginary demerits, she quietly listens — but in her head she sees inside him, a leaky blood vessel; soon he is lying on the floor, felled by an aneurysm.

Thus begins “Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches,” an AMC series that is occasionally fun but overall way too slow and careful, despite dripping with Gothic horror tropes.

Happy here:29 reasons why we're thankful to live in Arizona — from America's best pizza to Route 66

'Mayfair Witches' could use some 'American Horror Story' energy

It could use a little of the unhinged energy Ryan Murphy brings to the “American Horror Story” franchise.

A lot of it, actually.

In fairness, only five of the season’s 10 episodes were made available for review. It’s possible things pick up later on. It’s also possible they don’t.

As it stands so far, the show gives you just enough to keep watching, but more likely as one of those “I’ll get to it later” choices once you’ve mowed through “Wednesday” a second time.

Rowan, when not making people’s brains burst, is otherwise meek, letting people walk all over her.

Except when she is sexually voracious, bringing a friends-with-benefits type back to the boat where she lives.

Her life is about to get even more chaotic. Rowan got to New Orleans and learned that she is not just a descendant of a group of witches (she had a closed adoption and couldn’t access any information for years), but the heir to a whole line of them. It’s quite a change: One minute you’re just a garden-variety brain surgeon picking up dudes in a bar while occasionally bringing harm to your enemies with supernatural powers, the next you’re the head witch.

Hmm. Or maybe it’s not that big a change after all.

There is so much more going on than just this. There is a demon sort of a fellow named Lasher (Jack Huston) who has haunted the family for generations. Maybe. He’s up to something bad. Exactly what, why and how is unclear, at least to me. Some of the women, like Carlotta (Beth Grant, in a hilariously seething performance), resist him.

Others, like Deirdre (Annabeth Gish), have less luck with that. She’s kept in a catatonic state so that Lasher can’t get to her, or she can’t get to him, maybe. The point is when they’re together it’s dangerous. Which means, of course, that they can’t be kept apart forever. This is based on an Anne Rice series of novels, after all.

Tough task:Damar Hamlin's shocking collapse on MNF: Covering the 'extremely ugly' side of football

Harry Hamlin is having a good time. So why can't the audience?

Then there is Uncle Cortland (Harry Hamlin), a big shot in New Orleans who throws lavish parties and dotes on his family when he is not scheming with Lasher to harm them.

Again, I think. At this point in the story, anything could be developing.

Then there is Ciprien (Tongayi Chirisa), who, like Rowan, has “gifts” (though not hers) and has been assigned by a mysterious group to protect her, which is a funny word for leaving her by herself to wander off and almost get seduced by Lasher at a New Orleans funeral moving through the streets.

“Mayfair Witches” is at its best when it lets things slide off the rails a bit, like the funeral scene. It has a “Sixth Sense” I-see-dead-people vibe (Rowan being drugged intensifies this effect) and, unlike a lot of the other sequences, it’s fun.

And fun is what “Mayfair Witches” needs more of. It’s there in some of the performances, like Hamlin’s and Grant’s. Just let it fly. And maybe in the succeeding episodes it will. But so far it’s like Rowan’s character, a little all over the place and unsure of what it wants to be.

Doggone adorable:'Pets on Parade' is back on air in Arizona. Here's how to watch 'the cutest show on TV'

Where to watch 'Mayfair Witches'

Watch "Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches" at 10 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 8, on AMC. Streaming on AMC+

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk.

Subscribe to azcentral.com today. What are you waiting for?

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: 'Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches' doesn't cast much of a spell