Thursday 5 February 2009

TV Snark - Demons: Smitten OR Since When Did Harpies Look Like Dragons?



Sorry this is late but it was my birthday yesterday and no-one should have to watch and write about Demons on their birthday.

The pre credits teaser has Galvin and Mina visit the morgue and examine a corpse. Mina uses her psychic powers on the corpse and has a vision of a dead Luke. This would be slightly chilling if the theme tune didn't immediately kick in, "Woop, woop, woop!" Very dramatic.

This week Luke falls in love with a girl named Alice. This episode does that terrible thing that some shows do which is have the main character fall madly in love with someone in about five minutes. Luke spends the episode ignoring his friends in favour of his new girl, even when said friends are trying to tell him that the girl is a dragon-like harpy creature. The audience then has to endure Luke behaving like an idiot for half an hour until he figures out that his new girlfriend is a monster.

The harpy is the last surviving member of her family who were killed by Luke's father years ago. Presumably the harpy had better things to do than immediately take revenge on the Van Helsings and waited until Luke was almost grown up and trained in monster slaying instead.

Clyde from the Sarah Jane Adventures makes an appearance as a mobile phone stealing yoof. Maybe this is what Clyde gets up to when he's not under the supervision of Sarah Jane? Unfortunately for Clyde he gets beaten up by Luke in an unconvincing fight.

I have to say that Christian Cooke (Luke) is pretty poor in this episode. He just doesn't seem to be capable of the emotional range required (the dialogue doesn't help him though). It's never convincing that Luke loves Alice and he doesn't really emote all that well even when given the cliched 'stare out into the distance after losing a loved one' scene.

During the obligatory scene in the Stacks Galvin uses a flick book to find out that harpies take human form. This was awesomely bad, it could've been played for laughs but alas it was taken seriously. Still, I'm hoping they'll use a pop-up book next.

Luke eventually cottons on to his girlfriend's evil ways when he visits her flat and sees a dead body inside. This leads to another obligatory Demons scene - the club. Luke lures Alice to a club where he eventually has a poorly choreographed rooftop duel with some CGI. The fights may as well take place off screen, that way the show would save money and we'd be spared some very unconvincing action. It worked for Bonekickers and its chase sequences.

All in all this was pretty pedestrian stuff. The episode didn't attempt to do anything particularly interesting and lacked a compelling story or interesting villain.

Next Episode - Zombie Gaius returns! And it's the last episode! Hurray!

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