Sunday 4 January 2009

Comment: Demons

ITV have been pushing their new fantasy drama Demons in recent weeks, no doubt in an attempt to steal back some of the audience that have been gorging on the gamut of family-friendly dramas (the woeful Robin Hood adaption, and the recent Merlin series) that the BBC have been churning out.  

From the trailer I got the impression that Demons was going to be a brain-free action romp with clichés galore and bad dialogue. The first episode last night pretty much confirmed my suspicions. 

The drama is clearly (some would say cleverly) aimed partly at the teens that are into Twilight and other similar books. Christian Cooke (playing the role of protagonist Luke Rutherford/Van Helsing) has been firmly installed as eye candy, and spends an unnecessary amount of time wandering around topless. Philip Glenister takes on the role of Rupert Galvin, a demon hunter and Luke's Godfather, but doesn't really convince in the role and his American accent grates. Zoe Tapper (excellent in the BBC's post-apocalyptic drama Survivors) is barely able to make her mark as a blind Mina Harker, though hopefully her character will be developed in later episodes. The same goes for Holliday Grainger as Ruby. Mackenzie Crook manages to get under the skin of his character, the vampire Gladiolus Thrip, but his screen-time is also pretty limited. 

As I suspected, the first episode of Demons was loaded with clichés: young guy finds out he is the last in line of legendary vampire hunters, and is aided throughout by his Godfather who acts as a mysterious, wise mentor™. Like all good family-friendly dramas, the evil guys have ample chances to kill our intrepid young hero, but of course don't take them. There was no real plot to the first episode, our hero showed very little emotion at discovering his true heritage, and some of the dialogue was terrible - "Beware, demon! I will smite thee!" And the use of the song Ruby by crap Indie band The Kaiser Chiefs as Luke was racing to Ruby's aid was, to be frank, hilariously bad.

Still, all things considered, Demons wasn't a bad romp. Harmless fun really, and sometimes that's a good thing. I'll check out the next episode. It was certainly better than the aforementioned BBC adaption of Robin Hood (utter shit) and the ridiculous Bonekickers (which received a universal mauling in the press and has been dropped by the BBC after one series). 

3 comments:

ediFanoB said...

I'm not sure whether we will get the opportunity to watch Demons on German TV.

Anonymous said...

I thought the "Ruby"-song was hillarious. I loved this part. It took the stiffness away.

Liz said...

Good post. I genuinely looked forward to it but am amazed how - as usual - they take something that can turn out to be genuinely watchable and fun and turn it into such complete drivel. I think you may have to go to special night school to this. How they can suck the fun out of urban fantasy is beyond me. on.