dave13-1

Only a complete tv obscurantist would be familiar with this series, given its short run and low ratings. I saw every episode. The amoral tone of the show, with its cast of white trash characters scheming hard to avoid actual honest work, was set up well early on, but the show's major failing was also quickly apparent. The creators re-used old jokes. I was a kid when this thing was on the air, and I'd heard them already. Pity. The cast was good, and the concept was pretty fresh for the time. After years of 70s sitcoms striving for relevance, a down home comedy like Green Acres (but edgier and more cynical, in keeping with the times), was a nice change. Simply put, this could have been a breakout show, if only it had an original comedic voice. It did not.

If a show is recycling old double act jokes from the borscht belt in its premiere season, it's done. Too bad. It might have been fun.

So many Disney and Nickelodeon live action shows over the years have been simply familiar sit-com set ups, staffed with inexperienced and unskilled juveniles. To find one which is well-cast and focused on storytelling rather than lame gags and pranks is an unexpected treat.

Buffy on a Budget would describe the show neatly. Every week brings a new supernatural threat to the town of Whitechapel and our motley trio -fledgling vampire, apprentice wizard and budding psychic- has to swing into action to meet it. Each character has a distinctive personality and unique talents, making the group more interesting than any one would be alone. The comedy flows organically from the situations and character interactions, rather than from contrived punchline set ups or bad puns as so many of these live action sitcoms do. Some of the threats are unwittingly unleashed by the principals, an old sitcom standby, but even then it's all handled in a creative and fun way. The individual episodes can be a bit variable, with some better thought out from a story construction standpoint than others, but the overall level of quality and originality is high. Recommended. It's a lot of fun.

Ignore the poster art. It promises the kind of sexy horror comedy that proliferated back in the vhs era, but delivers on none of the elements. Pacing? It moves like a sloth with a hernia. Suspense? Outside of teasing whether or not a character might actually fall asleep delivering the leaden dialogue, there is none. Scares? The vamp has a habit of popping in out of nowhere, but that's more irksome than frightening. Interesting spin on traditional vampire lore? There is just nothing here that hasn't been done before and better. The characters have little to do or say of interest, so it's hard to become engaged with their actions or care about consequences. A half hour in, I was wondering whether I would mind if in the next scene the zombie apocalypse arrived and ate everyone? Not really.

Vampires are not a fresh cinematic idea. We have had them since F. W. Murnau. In the same way that a book has to sell itself to the reader in chapter one, a movie has about twenty minutes to answer the question why should the viewer care what happens to the characters. And a vampire movie has a tougher job than most, since it's such a familiar genre. But bland, inert, jokeless, unsuspenseful, and free of all gratuitous exploitation content won't get it done. Avoid.