David Greenwalt

September 27, 2007 - For a lot of people, TV is like sausage; the less you know about how it got made, the better. With Moonlight, its unusually bumpy road - even for the traditionally rough terrain of television - may help explain a few things. After all, when you follow the run up to air of a show like this, you tend to expect the worst.

At first it sounded like Moonlight was going to be a bad rip-off of Angel, and then former Angel producer David Greenwalt came on board. And then three roles were re-cast. And then Greenwalt left. The pilot has been re-shot and here we are. So what is the Moonlight that made it to air? It’s a bit of a mess, and really neither here nor there.

The show stars Alex O’Loughlin, who was quite good as Kevin Hiat on FX’s The Shield, playing a detective who butts heads with Michael Chiklis’s Vic Mackey. O’Loughlin does a decent job here, which is admirable considering his character, "Mick St. John," seems less than fully formed. He’s not as brooding as Angel, less of a sociopath then Lestat and (thankfully) less of a whiner than Louis. Jason Dohring is a welcome presence as a centuries old vampire who has an unlikely friendship with St. John. In his few scenes, Dohring manages to create a character that does have a tremendous weariness and cynicism that comes with immortality.

The show isn’t terrible. It’s just a mix of disparate parts that really don’t add up to much. Once the action gets started, too late in the show, it plays well. This is a show from Matrix producer Joel Silver, after all. The rules for the vampires are unclear, the world that they inhabit seems generic at best, but the actors all hold promise. English actress Sophia Myles, here in a thankless role as the damsel in distress slash sidekick to St. John, is perhaps the most promising aspect of the show. While it’s not as much on evident here, she tends to bring an intelligence and strength to her roles that the producers would do well to utilize as the series progresses.

Moonlight is definitely courting the goth romance audience. Shannyn Sossamon plays a "lady in white"-type who also happens to be a past love of St. John’s. There are several frames of the show that could be turned into the cover of a romance novel. The series’ recent tie-in with Celine Dion signals more movement in this direction. There are more than enough fleeting touches and forlorn glances from Mick St. John to fill a couple of Lifetime movies. It’s rough going for the most part, but Moonlight isn’t the disaster it could have been. This isn’t going to win over any Angel fans, but time will tell (and quickly) if the series is worth watching.