Wasn’t San Dimas where Bill and Ted lived?
I too saw this and said, “Angel?” (Never saw Forever Knight.)
I see no reason why a vampire couldn’t be the good guy in Vancouver. They could even call the series Vampcouver.
Or maybe, instead of a bat or wolf, he can turn into a mountain lion? Then he could be a vampire cougar, in Vancouver.
“Only in Vancouver could a vampire be a cougar.”
Then he could team up with Manimal and fight ninjas.
So let me see if I’ve got this right.
Before Moonlight there was Angel,
before Angel there was Forever Knight,
before Forever Knight there was Hannibal King,
before Hannibal King there was…?
I had completely forgotten about Hannibal King.
Hey, it has Marshall from Alias in it.
Brian
I loved Angel and Forever Knight.
I didn’t love Moonlight. Is the directing to blame when everyone, including actors like Dohring who I know are more talented than this, sounds wooden and lame?
And was that professor the guy who played Dracula on Buffy?
As I recall, they didn’t voluntarily pull the plug. The network decided not to pick it up for a sixth season, and they didn’t let Mutant Enemy know until the last minute, which forced them to pull together the hasty two part series finale. Just looking at season five, it certainly seems clear that they had more planned. The whole Illyria subplot was just picking up steam when they ended it, for example. I don’t think the lack of hot chicks was the problem. I mean, they had Amy Acker running around in skintight leather for half the season, which was way more fan service than the show had ever had before.
It sort of sucked. The plot was very obvious, no twists, no surprises. Pretty much a by the book vampire PI show if there was such a thing.
One of the things I liked was that we didn’t get the ‘typical’ set up in these things, that is, there’s one ‘noble’ vampire and all the rest are a pack of thirst-driven monsters, barely above the level of animals when it comes to thinking. Our hero standing alone, hated by his own kind, hunting them to atone for his own evil deeds/nature… That sort of thing.
I liked the coroner vampire, what a great job choice for a vampire. I hope we see more ‘working stiff’ type vampires, ones who have integrated into human society and control their blood lust enough to not leave a pile of pallid corpses on the back porch.
That concept is **solid gold! ** I would absolutely tune in to that series.
I liked the establishing montage (“this is what it’s like to be a vampire…”) and the exchange the hero had with the other vampire who visited his apartment (was this the coroner character?), but the rest was mediocre or worse. Not having seen any other vampire shows, this one reminded me of “Beauty and the Beast,” with a more photogenic not-really-human oddball. As for the charms of this leading man, I’d give him a 7 out of 10. I didn’t get much personality or charisma, but then again I didn’t watch the entire show. (Hey, there was a war movie and some football games on opposite!)
One problem with “women in jeopardy” storylines is that it’s hard to keep the woman in a state of jeopardy without making her come across like a complete bubblehead. In last night’s show (was this the pilot?), the undercover [WTH?! – she delivers her own stories on the Net, so how long does she expect/hope to remain anonymous, anyway?] reporter goes way out on a limb for a shady assignation to cover a secret ritual. When she manages to escape with her life, she throws herself at the very guy who escorted her to her near doom, and turns her back on him to use his cell while standing right next to his car with the car door open… gah, the stupid, how it burns!
OTOH, many people get a certain frisson from stories involving silly but lovely women in jeopardy and the serious, noble-minded, secret-identity hunks who protect them, myself included, so maybe I’ll end up watching it for awhile. Stupid girlie romantic hard-wiring… gurr…
No, the visiting vampire was the wealthy old friend, played by Jason Dohring.
It was the debut, which doesn’t necessarily mean it was the pilot.
Probably Los Angeles gets used so much for vampire shows because of the name. Yaknow, City of Angels?
That said, I’d love to see a vampire show taking place at, say, Monterey, California. It could have a romance plot involving the vampire hero and a female soldier at the Presidio of Monterey (perhaps studying to become a Romanian Linguist or some such).
Even better, a vampire movie/show taking place in College Station, Texas, or BFE, Kansas. 
The problem with having a vampire series located outside of a major population center is that, unless you’re goign to build in a Buffy-style SEP field regarding the inordinate number of deaths by neck rupture, eventually someone’s going to twig to the fact that there are an inordinate number of deaths by neck rupture in this little town. There’s also the question of how large a prey population would be needed to sustain the vampire population from the show (PhD candidates with too much time on their hands have actually studied this). From a production standpoint, setting a series like this in a larger city makes for larger pools of available talent, greater resources, etc.
I thought it was pretty bad, but the episode had a rushed feeling to it, so it’s possible it will get better when they slow down a little. Mick is good-looking, and the actor seems like he could pull it off with better writing. I know Jason Dohring can do better than that.
The fight between the two vampires was really, really lame, and surprising, because most vampire fiction makes a big deal out of a confrontation between a vampire and his maker.
Sophia Myles, who played the woman reporter, played a vampire in the movie Underworld. She has a really interesting face.
Okay, watched it last night - didn’t really do it for me. Like “Bionic Woman,” I didn’t hate it and I didn’t love it. I’ll give it another episode or two to wow me. This show definitely suffers from all the comparisons with “Angel” - there’s none of Joss and company’s sharp-as-a-tack writing and humour here. “Angel” may have been a turgid supernatural soap opera, but it was entertaining, dammit!
Another hole in the plot was that no one in the professor’s group recognized Beth. With all their interest in vampires, wouldn’t they have been all over that website? Braids and a baseball cap do not make a disguise.
Yet another hole is St. John being the one who was asked to find little Beth. What if her mom had asked the police to find her, or another investigator? What’s Coraline gonna do then? Just keep killing until the right guy shows up?