Christian Cooke is definitely the pin-up of Demons. The audience's first glimpse of his character, Luke, is when he is strolling around his loft-apartment home in his boxers.
In case that hasn't got the target viewers' hormones a-raging, a couple of scenes later the 22-year-old actor is stripped to the waist displaying his chiselled physique again.
Zoe Tapper and Holliday Grainger
The target audience for ITV1's take on Buffy the Vampire Slayer is, of course, teenagers. So, for the lads to lock eyes on there is Zoe Tapper, recently seen in Survivors, as the mysterious blind half-vampire Mina. Holliday Grainger, well known to fans of BBC1's school drama Waterloo Road, is Luke's love interest, Ruby.
So Demons gets the lithe bodies right. What about the dead bodies – or half-lives, as they're called?
Redlip, a shadowy stalker who dislocates his jaw to regurgitate his food, was pretty unpleasant. The Noisy Boys, a band of hooded hyena types, were fairly menacing down dark alleys around Waterloo Station in London. But the whole show really got into gear with the appearance of Gladiolus Thrip.
Mackenzie Crook and Philip Glenister
Mackenzie Crook looked a long way from his characters in The Office and Pirates of the Caribbean as the Type 12 underworld freak, the most powerful half-life on show in episode one. Dressed like a ghoulish teddy boy with a weird ivory beak, he was sinister and had good lines. On capturing Luke, he chirped, 'Like taking sweetbreads from a baby.'
Capturing Luke is the premise of the drama. He is the last descendant of Dracula-baiter Abraham van Helsing from the Bram Stoker novel. Philip Glenister, less in-yer-face than his Life on Mars incarnation of Gene Hunt, plays an American, Rupert Galvin, the wise older man with a mysterious past who comes to tell Luke that his destiny is to fight the creatures of the night. A bit like Anthony Head's character Rupert Giles in Buffy.
Twilight and Love of the Supernatural
Demons moved a sharp pace, with a pounding rock soundtrack during the action scenes. Christian Cooke, recently seen in a couple of Doctor Who episodes, was winsome and reluctant as the teen being conscripted in the fight against evil (though why he and Holliday Grainger played London youngsters with northern accents was never explained).
With hit movies such as Twilight and stories mingling young love and the supernatural becoming a significant sub-genre (Mills and Boon even has a new Nocturne line of scary love stories), Demons is clearly a creature of the times. It has enough teen angst and sex appeal to keep its Saturday early-evening audiences tuning in, what with the catty looks between Ruby and Mina and Luke's stuttering relationship with Ruby.
Throw in the special effects and the elaborate prosthetics and this could be a winner for ITV1 in the slot dominated by Doctor Who when he's passing through this time zone.
One mistake the opening episode didn't make was to pile on too much story and too many characters. So there is plenty lined up for the coming weeks, including Richard Wilson as zombie priest Father Simeon, a vampire called Quincy, the half-man, half-rat Mr Tibbs, and the demonic Gilgamel.
Horrible Gilgamel
Episode two will feature the child-stealing Gilgamel, who was the hardest creature for special effects to create as he flies around a church and does stunts, but also one of the drama's most chilling.
Demons is produced by International Emmy Award-winning Producers Julian Murphy and Johnny Capps (Hex, Sugar Rush) and directed by Tom Harper (Cherries, Spoil) and Matthew Evans (Robin Hood, Rebus).
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