Supernatural: Scarecrow

Half way through the first season and Supernatural is starting to transform from a Picaresque "monster-of-the-week" show to a single ongoing plot as the backstory gradually comes to the fore.

Picking up where the last episode finished, with concrete proof that their dad is still alive, the boys are split over what to do next. Dean wants to follow his dad's orders and investigate a series of disappearances in Illinois while Sam wants to head off to California and try to find their father.

The boys split up with Dean finding himself in the idyllic, backwoods town of Burkitsville (which seems to be the centre of the disappearances), and Sam starts hitchhiking across country and runs into fellow hitcher Meg Masters (Nicki Aycox), a real hottie.

Dean, naturally, gets himself into trouble when he digs into the town's background and unearths suggestions of a pagan Norse god - who came to the town with the original settlers - that demands a yearly sacrifice to keep the crops bountiful.

Sam begins to suspect that something is wrong when he can't contact Dean on his phone, but Meg tries to persuade him to come with her to California. Family wins out, but from the final scene we know we haven't seen the last of the lovely Meg.

The show has really found its own voice now, after skating a bit too close to old X-Files territory (even though Scarecrow features a cameo by William B. Davis, aka The Cigarette Smoking Man), we can now start describing other programmes as having a "Supernatural" episode.

If this series has a fault - and it's a very minor one because it is constantly handles with such style - it is that many of the episodes are either reminscent, or direct lifts of, cheesy horror films - this one, for instance, has more than a whiff of Children of The Corn and The Wicker Man and probably many other 'human sacrifice'-centric tales.