Demons: Smitten

I find myself cutting Demons a lot of slack because it is probably the closest we will ever get to a British Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Tonight's episode, Smitten, in particular, had a very Buffy flavour to it, with Luke, the last Van Helsing, falling for a new girl at college, who Galvin and co. reckon is really a shapechanging dragon-like creature called a Harpy who is after Luke's blood because a Van Helsing slew her two sisters in the 16th Century.

And the clever twist? She is! No big surprise. Using Scooby Doo logic, the new face on the block is the bad guy.

What shame. This episode could have been so much better if, after Luke stood up to Galvin and defended his new love, Alice (Laura Alkman), it had turned out she wasn't the murderous harpy... and it was a complete co-incidence that she had arrived in London at the same time as the beast.

But no, Howard Overman's script took the easy option and everything was neatly wrapped up in a nice little bow at the end when Luke succeeded in "smiting" the harpy and everything returned to normal.

Character-wise Alice would have made a good foil to Ruby, who didn't seem to have as much to do in this story as normal, if she had turned out not to be a half-life and had stayed around... but it was not to be.

Instead we had the recycled Buffy-dialogue about how it's impossible to have normal relationships in this particular line of work... boo hoo... blah, blah, blah...

On the positive side, Luke got to show off his Slayer... sorry, Smiter moves against a trio of civilians (including Clyde from The Sarah Jane Adventures) who were hassling Alice. I think is the first time - outside of Galvin's training sessions - we've actually had a chance to see Luke do his whole martial arts thing, because normally he just shoots monsters and they blow up.

That being said, his "Van Helsing reflexes" from They Bite haven't come into play again.

As always, Demons delivered on atmosphere and background - we're getting a good sense of how Galvin interacts with the half-lifes - but it fell short on story. At least this week's made sense, it just wasn't that original to anyone who'd watched more than two episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

What I would love, and is never going to happen, is for the writers of Demons to give up the pretense and just throw in something that ties their show to the Buffyverse; have Galvin talk about Rupert Giles or The Watchers, have Mina make a passing reference to Angel. I'm not asking for much; just a little bone, something to just to make my inner fanboy go "yes, I knew it" and punch the sky.