By Brandon Nolta

Every freak job in the world ends up in Los Angeles, if you believe network TV. Aliens, monsters and big-ass robots come to the City of Angels for fun and sun, and usually, they set up shop. Apparently, L.A. is also the place to be for those with entrepreneurial spirit.

Among those with such spirit is Mick St. John (Alex O’Loughlin), a handsome rake with a private investigator’s license, a beautiful bachelor pad, and a taste for A-positive. Our friend Mick is, yes, a vampire 90 years young, in what has become something of a new tradition in the genre: undead detectives.  His latest case gets him in touch with Beth Turner (Sophia Myles), a lovely young reporter for a news (I use the term loosely) Web site, who teams up with Mick to look into the death of a college student involved with a freaky-deaky anthropology professor (Rudolf Martin, who’s played Dracula once or twice himself).

I could give more details of the plot, but that might be going to the rehash trough one too many times. I liked this show when it was FOREVER KNIGHT, and I liked it even better when it was ANGEL, but the mix is a little thin by now. Storywise, you’ve got to be able to bring something new to the table when working with such well-used tropes, and frankly, CBS is not the first place that pops into the conscious mind when thinking of innovative writing and interesting stories. There are a few new wrinkles in terms of the mythology—the undead aren’t flammable in sunlight, they can sense the past through smell (that’s a good one), stakes don’t seal the deal when it comes to killing the fanged set—but the basic approach seems unaltered. Vampires hiding out from humanity, a loose organization of the undead, one good vampire afraid to love, blah blah blah.


That’s not to say there aren’t some good things about MOONLIGHT. Chief among those advantages would be the star of the show, who brings an easy charm to a character that could slip into darkness without too much trouble. O’Loughlin, who had an intense guest stint on the latest season of THE SHIELD, isn’t a physically imposing presence, but is ingratiating and likable even when tossing bad guys through the air. He even sells the obligatory voiceover narration. Co-star Myles, who looks eerily like a younger, blonde Rachel Weisz, isn’t too shabby at brightening the screen herself, managing to be perky without pushing it too far. MOONLIGHT’s version of L.A. is a little sunnier than other vampire shows set in the same city—cough, cough, ANGEL—which, given its network home, isn’t surprising but is welcome nonetheless.

The creators of MOONLIGHT have set themselves a challenge in trying to blaze a new trail for a genre that already has two well-loved examples to follow. Judging by this first episode, they haven’t found the key to standing out from its forebears yet, but they have the right actor and right pieces to give it a good run, although the romantic trap of undead-human storylines may prove too much for them to resist. I know, on the network that gave us BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and GHOST WHISPERER? Hard to imagine, but let’s hope they don’t go there.