Demons: They Bite

First thing I have to say about Demons - ITV's new Saturday evening genre show - is despite initial appearances, and its obvious debt to Buffy The Vampire Slayer, it wasn't all that bad.

Schoolboy Luke Rutherford (Christian Cooke) discovers he's the "chosen one", the last living descendant of Abraham Van Helsing, the legendary monster slayer. He is alerted to this fact by the arrival of his long-absent godfather, Rupert Giles... er, sorry Rupert Galvin (Philip Glenister) and then promptly attacked by a gremlin and its revolting master, a shadowy man called Redlip (Martin Hancock).

Redlip worked for Gladiolus Thrip (Mackenzie Crook), a powerful, supernatural bounty hunter, who has been searching for the last Van Helsing.

Christian Cooke is quiet drippy as the show's hero, Luke, in a Twilight-kinda way I suppose, and manages to spend at least a quarter of the first episode with his shirt off... one of the little girls, I guess.

Not only does he have his own 'Watcher' (in the form of Galvin), but - for no readily explainable reason, also has Buffy-like super-reflexes and a Willow-esque 'best friend' in the form of Ruby (Holliday Grainger, who is quite the cutie), who, very willingly, gets involved in his escapades.

Glenister, despite the initially annoying American accent, isn't playing another incarnation of Life On Mars' Gene Hunt, which is sort of a shame - but probably wouldn't have been appropriate for a pre-watershed show. Hopefully though the character of Galvin will develop during these first six episodes, as he appears the most interesting character in the ensemble, thanks to Glenister's screen dominating presence.

The team is rounded-out by blind pianist Mina Harker (Zoe Tapper, from Survivors), who may be a descendant of the original Mina Harker (from Bram Stoker's Dracula) or the actual Mina Harker. She's a colleague of Galvin's and an expert on 'The Stacks', the secret base Luke has inherited.

As secret bases go, The Stacks is pretty cool. It's a giant library (and arsenal), established by Abraham Van Helsing and containing all his books, weapons and trophies. Again, the Buffy comparison is inescapable, but it was physically more reminscent of the underground base used by Hellboy and the BPRD in the Hellboy films.

The show's dialogue could do with some polishing up; I don't think Joss Whedon is going to be threatened by many of the limp lines writer Peter Tabern had the characters speaking (although the Star Wars gag was good, if obvious), but the story was a good introduction to the world of Demons and the new Scooby Gang that we are going to be rooting for.

Unlike recent genre shows that have popped up (Merlin and Survivors), trying to cash in on the ratings generated by Doctor Who, I think Demons is going to be one I'm going to enjoy tuning into each week.