What It's About: Mick St. John is a vampire. Turned into a monster against his will by his wife, Coraline, Mick swore to use his powers to help people and not to feed on humans. Once he saved a child, Beth, from his ex-wife, in an encounter that forced Mick to kill Coraline (vampires, it turns out, can only be destroyed by fire). Grown-up Beth becomes a reporter and ends up working with Mick and finding out his secret. Despite the difference in their ages Mick and Beth feel an attraction, but Beth has a serious boyfriend, and Mick recoils from imposing his burden on anyone else.
Origins: Moonlight was created by Ron Koslow (who helped create Beauty and the Beast) and Trevor Munson, and is executive-produced by Hollywood mogul Joel Silver. Originally titled Twilight, the show has a troubled gestation in which the entire cast below the lead was jettisoned, the pilot rewritten and reshot, and producers came and left. David Greenwalt, a co-creator of Angel, was involved in the project early on but left, citing health reasons.
Popular Characters: Alex O’Loughlin (Mick) is handsome and buff and has a good pained expression, but doesn’t quite sell the idea of being a 90-year-old vampire, or why he’s obsessed with Beth. The supporting cast includes Sophia Myles (who used her innate luminescence to much better effect in the Doctor Who episode "The Girl in the Fireplace") as Beth and Jason Dohring (Logan from Veronica Mars, here doing an even worse job than O’Loughlin of conveying the jaded world-weariness of a deathless vamp).
Flavor: A real throwback – Moonlight plays like a private-eye drama from the 70s, except the hero is a vampire. Even the vampire angle seems stale and simplistic, feeling decidedly pre-Buffy and definitely pre-Angel. This show is from an alternate universe in which Joss Whedon and Kevin Williamson never lived, and arch, intelligent supernatural television never came to be.
Network: Moonlight is shown on CBS. For showtimes see When It's On.
