Moonlight: First Season Premier

Moonlight, the story vampire private investigator, got started last night with an intriguing premier. The plot revolves around the 90 year old Mick St. John (played by Alex O'Laughlin), made an immortal 60 years ago on his wedding night by his bride, who he is shown if flash back killing after she kidnapped a little girl who she intended to make into a child vampire, presumably creating the perfect little undead nuclear family.

The writers start the premier out with a handy primer on the rules for vampirism the show will operate by henceforth, with St. John sitting in the interview chair explaining himself. Crucifixes, garlic, water, and stakes through the heart have no effect, while too much sunlight makes him feel badly, but doesn't result in bursting into flame. The only ways, he tells us, to kill a vampire is by burning or decapitation. And he doesn't sleep in a casket, but in a freezer. Whew. Glad he put that canard to rest. The sequence turns out to be in his imagination, but it's a clever way of getting the ground rules out quickly in order to move on to the real action.

It seems that a young woman has been murdered in a manner that was staged to resemble a vampire attack. St. John has a practical interest in finding the culprit, that being to quickly get the word 'vampire' out of the media. In case we don't get the point we're also introduced to Josef, a several-hundred-year-old vampire, who, unlike St. John who gets his blood at the morgue, drinks the blood of the living. Vampire hysteria, he points out, could be very bad for the continued well-being of the real vampires out there.

Exsanguination by two puncture holes in the neck makes for a headline that practically writes itself, "Vampire Murder," which is exactly what beautiful tabloid reporter Beth Turner (Sophia Myles) brands the killing. It's clear from the first moment this reporter walks across the screen that she is to be Mick St. John's love interest. The two have a palpable chemistry between them, which should make for an interesting story arc as the relationship builds.

The two team up to investigate the murder, very quickly settling on a creepy professor of some kind of ethno-studies clap trap that he's managed to parlay into a cult of himself mostly made up of cute co-eds, one of whom just happened to be the recently deceased victim in the "vampire murder." It seems the good professor has taken advantage of goth girl vampire fixation and branded himself a vampire. Real vampires, he explains in a tone so arrogant and self-satisfied we can't wait to see him brought down, really just feed on the Prana of those around them. What ever. We already know what real vampires do. The guy, who's obviously tenured, has come up with the perfect vehicle for getting his students between the sheets.

When Beth, plucky reporter that she is, poses as a student wishing to audit his class he quickly invites her to join his little "study group." When the professor dismisses the rest of the group and makes his play for Beth, he discovers the recording device she's wearing and she flees. St. John arrives, coming from the scene where he's just discovered a second vampire victim, but misses her. Luckily she runs into the professor's graduate teaching assistant just outside. Or not so luckily, we realize, as he pulls out a syringe and plunges it into her back, stuffing her into his car. It seems he's a little obsessed with the professor himself and thinks that women are wasting all of the prof's energy, or some such thing.

St. John pursues the car on foot and uses his super strength to whoop ass on the killer, taking a knife in the stomach during the struggle. We see the knife wound instantly heal. At the dénouement it's revealed that Beth is really the little girl he rescued twenty years earlier and he's been keeping tabs on her every since.

The show promises to be a fun reprise of "Kolchak: The Night Stalker," which aired in 1974 and was hailed by Chris Carter of "X-Files" fame as the inspiration for that show. For those who don't remember it, Kolchak was a reporter who tracked down (supernatural) perpetrators of crimes the police couldn't solve because of their anti-supernatural prejudices. "Night Stalker" only lasted one season, but one wonders if it wouldn't have been a bigger success in the internet age. After all the internet has made chupacabras as familiar as Bigfoot. And like Kolchak, Moonlight seems like it's a show that won't take itself too seriously. The writers seem to appreciate the need to avoid over-playing dark and spooky. They show vampires engaging in verbal jousting over the best blood types, for instance. "O positive has a better finish," the vampire morgue attendant and blood dealer tells St. John.
Hopefully the show will live up to its predecessors and the promise of its premier.