Forgotten Television: Moonlight 2007

Mick St. John (Alex O’Loughlin) is a private investigator who also happens to be an 85-year-old vampire.  Unlike other vampires, Mick has standards where he will not hunt women, children or innocents. Vampires can only be killed by beheading or burning, a stake through the heart paralyzes them, but does not kill them.  Garlic, holy water, and crucifixes have no effect, and sunlight makes them progressively weaker the longer they are in it.  They have superhuman strength, heal rapidly, and can defy gravity to a limited extent, and these powers grow stronger with age. At the scene of a murder, Mick meets Beth Turner (Sophia Myles) a reporter for the online newspaper “Buzzwire”.  Mick had saved Beth when she was kidnapped as a child and has watched over her for 20 years which Beth does not initially remember.  The two join forces when it appears that the murder victim was killed by a vampire.  Beth, not knowing that vampires actually exist, sensationalizes the story making Mick and his friend Josef (Jason Dohring) a 400-year-old vampire nervous that their secret may be discovered. It is soon revealed that a human, posing as a vampire committed the crimes which leads them to a college professor and a vampire cult.  As the series progresses, Mick and Beth continue to work together and eventually become romantically involved.

Moonlight is a 2007 American paranormal crime drama created by Trevor Munson and Ron Koslow.  Trevor conceived the character of Mick Angel in a 2004 novel which was adapted into a feature film script.  Nina Tassler at CBS hired Ron Koslow, the creator of one of the best series ever, 1987s Beauty and the Beast, to work with Trevor on rewriting the script for television. The show was originally called Twilight and the presentation to CBS was only 20 minutes long and starred an entirely different cast aside from Alex O’Loughlin. CBS renamed the show Moonlight when it picked it up and the show premiered on September 28, 2007 and ran until May 16, 2008 with a total of 16 episodes.  Although the show developed a loyal fan base, it was not well received by the critics with most reviews for the pilot episode being critical of the writing and the acting. The second episode got better reviews, but they were still on the negative side.  Even with the bad press, it was nominated in 2008 for “Favorite New TV Drama” on the People’s Choice Awards and a Saturn Award when it was released on DVD in 2009.

I must agree with the critics on this one, the acting and the writing weren’t completely bad, but was incredibly uneven.  There were moments that seemed natural and rang true, but there were more moments that felt forced and unreal.  This inconsistency through off the overall rhythm of the pilot and made it difficult to connect or care about any of the characters.  Too much exposition was stuffed into the first episode and was not allowed to unfold naturally, this prevented more character development which would have helped to solidify the main characters connection to each other.  On the plus side, the storyline itself was interesting and I was intrigued by the general premise.  I can see why it garnered a fan base and over time, with some good writing and better character development, this could have been an amazing series.  Overall, this isn’t a bad show, it just could have been so much better, and I expected more from Ron Koslow.