Domino Day is a supernatural drama available in full now on BBCiPlayer, while it's also being shown on BBC Three.
The series features Adult Material star Siena Kelly playing a witch with the power to destroy everything, particularly bad men. She stars as the titular Domino Day, a young woman with extraordinary powers, and is joined by an exciting cast, including Poppy Lee Friar, Sam Howard-Sneyd, Babirye Bukilwa and Alisha Bailey.
The series, which is set in Manchester in the UK, has been created by Gangs of London’s Lauren Sequeira, so you can expect lots of power struggles and gritty drama.
So here's everything you need to know about the Buffy-like six-part series Domino Day…
Domino Day release date
Domino Day is a six-part series available now in full on BBCiPlayer. It dropped on Wednesday 31 January 2024, with episodes airing weekly on BBC3 from 9pm that night. Episodes are also showing weekly on Mondays on BBC1 from February 5 2024.
Is there a trailer for Domino Day?
Yes there's a trailer for Domino Day. Take a look at Domino on the hunt for Manchester's single men below..
Domino Day plot
The six-part series is set in modern day Manchester, England, and follows Domino Day (Siena Kelly) who spends her time on dating apps. But she isn’t looking for love, she’s swiping to hunt. Her strategy is to target the city’s unsavoury bachelors and fiercely suck the energy out of them.
Aware of her impressive but terrifying powers, Domino is desperate to find a community that can help her understand who she truly is. But what she doesn’t know is there’s a coven of witches hot on her heels, watching her every move and determined to stop her before she destroys everyone and everything around her.
Coven leader Kat (Alisha Bailey), aura-seeing empath Sammie (Babirye Bukilwa), telekinetic witch Geri (Poppy Lee Friar) and party-loving sorceress Jules (Molly Harris) are covertly tracking Domino, attempting to understand her powers. But just as the young witch finds solace with kind barman Leon (Percelle Ascott), her ex-boyfriend and fellow witch, Silas (Sam Howard-Sneyd), reappears, sending her spiralling.
What does this mean for them all and will there be a final showdown?
Domino Day cast — Siena Kelly on playing Domino
Siena Kelly plays witch Domino Day who feels compelled to feed off the energy of others.
"Domino is an extremely powerful witch who’s new to Manchester," says BAFTA nominee Siena Kelly, 28. "She has to feed, it’s not a choice. If she doesn’t, she will be drained of all energy and will eventually die. She knows what she’s doing is bad, so she justifies it by tactically picking men whom she thinks might be dangerous.
"She doesn’t know what her full powers are, though, nor where her witchcraft comes from. She’s deeply isolated and searching for a community, but doesn’t realise she’s also being hunted. The biggest influence on Domino is Silas, but it’s a tricky, nuanced and toxic relationship in which he encourages her worst traits to grow.
"I really empathised with Domino in being desperate to change your situation but having absolutely no resources to change it. I also found the idea of being so powerful and not having realised it or not really understanding just how powerful she is really interesting and something that I wanted to explore.
"The biggest influence on Domino is her relationship with her ex-boyfriend Silas, which isn’t a great relationship. He’s another witch and it’s a really tricky, nuanced and toxic relationship where he encourages her worst traits to grow. He’s also the first witch that she’s ever met so he’s her sole way into the witching world. He gets to be the person who influences her on witch politics, telling her what’s allowed and what’s not, what laws to follow, etc, which is a lot of power to have over somebody. They do love each other but it’s not a good or healthy relationship.
"The next biggest relationship is the one she develops with Sammie, who’s another witch that’s a lot kinder than Silas. Sammie recognises that Domino is far more powerful than the other witches she knows and really wants her to grow and learn to control her powers and love herself. She wants Domino to recognise that she’s not an inherently bad person, which takes a while for Domino to realise, but she only realises it because of Sammie. Sammie is a brilliant, positive influence on Domino’s life.
"And then there's the relationships she has with a few humans in her life, which are also very difficult relationships to navigate, because the humans don't know that she's a witch, so she has a lot of secrets with them. There's Leon, who is a man that she meets in a bar that she develops a really beautiful romantic connection and friendship with. There’s also Vedita, her boss in the café. They have a lot of chemistry together and they really enjoy each other’s company. But she knows she can’t really be her true self around both of them as they’re humans and she’s a witch. So there’s always a level that she can’t quite get to with them."
* Siena Kelly previously starred in Adult Material and Hit & Run and played Michelle in the 2019 Sky series Temple. She also starred in the ITV1 miniseries Vanity Fair.
Who else is starring in Domino Day?
Domino Day also stars Poppy Lee Friar (Life and Death In the Warehouse, Ackley Bridge, In My Skin) as Geir who is part of the witches Coven alongside Babirye Bukilwa (We Hunt Together) as Sammie, Alisha Bailey (Call the Midwife, Strike) and Molly Harris (Industry as Kat, Monsoon).
Percelle Ascott (I Came By, The Innocents) is Leon, Sam Howard-Sneyd (Clarity and Chaos, The Children) is Silas, while Christopher Jeffers (Rocketman, Coronation Street), Jonah Rzeskiewicz (Death on the Nile, The Dig) Maimuna Memon (Sherwood, Lazarus) Lucy Cohu and Kris Hitchen round out the cast.
Percelle Ascott says: "We meet Leon right at the start in episode one. He's not magical like the rest of the characters are but he has a good connection with Domino from the beginning. However, as their love begins to blossom there are people out there who aren’t a fan of their romance so as they’re trying to figure things out between them, and Leon gets caught up in the mess with Domino.
"I think it was the first conversation I had with the director, Eva Sigurdardottir. As there are so many supernatural elements, she wanted to find a way to ground the show through my relationship with Domino. At the end of the day, it’s just a relationship and it was fun to explore how we can find the comedy within our relationship and take it away from all the other scenes that are so supernatural. I feel like the scenes you see with Leon are more stripped back, grounded and wholesome."
Sam Howard-Sneyd on playing Silas in Domino Day
Can you give us an overview of Domino Day?
Sam Howard-Sneyd says: "I’d describe it as the world of witchcraft meets the 21st century in the world of dating. So it's the problems that people can relate to maybe not in a magical sense, but in a metaphorical sense, and navigating that world of magic with the tricky task of navigating the 21st century as well.
What kind of show is Domino Day and what makes it unique?
Sam says: "What I love about the show is that it's led by these relationships and by the drama between the different people. It definitely has magic in it but I think it’s less for the sake of magic but more to show the relationships and to provide some tension and some drama to give you a window into people's true character and the way they have to change throughout the show and the way their relationships changed."
What are the show’s key themes?
Sam says: "I think identity is a really big part of it. Power and our relationship with power. As well as what we choose as the important things in life. Also this idea of change. Whether we should be going with change or fighting against it. I believe change is the only constant that we have and some characters choose to fight against that and try keep things as is, whereas other characters try and move with it, and I think that's very interesting.."
Behind the scenes and more on Domino Day
Filming began on Domino Day on location in Manchester in March 2023. Domino Day is executive produced by Lucy Richer and Ayela Butt for the BBC, Laurence Bowen and Chris Carey for Dancing Ledge Productions and writer/creator Lauren Sequeira. Some episodes have been written by Charlene James and Haleema Mirza.
Writer/creator Lauren Sequeira describes the show as ‘dark, sexy and deep’, and hopes young people will love it: "I’m a fan of the supernatural genre, and the Americans have done it so well with the likes of True Blood, The Vampire Diaries, etc. But I thought we needed our own show in the UK. I wanted to bring something vampiric to a witch show, and then place that witch in a dating app setting, where it's so transient and you’re constantly swiping onto the next. But I wanted the audience to be really afraid of Domino, then flip it. The supernatural elements of the show empower her. When guys think they can do terrible things to Domino, terrible things are done to them."
