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.