TV is the New Reading

BBC America’s ‘Demons’ gets off to a good start

Despite parallels with other productions,
Van Helsing reboot stands on its own

“Life on Mars” concluded so abruptly last spring on ABC some fans still had whiplash.

However, those familiar with the UK version of that show will want to check out the BBC America production called “Demons.”

Philip Glenister, who played the gruff detective inspector Gene Hunt in the UK’s “Life on Mars,” shows up as a less broadly drawn demon hunter in the new production.

His character, Rupert Galvin, is godfather to a young man called Luke Rutherford, whose father was a Van Helsing. In fact, since his father’s apparent death, Luke is the last of the Van Helsing line, and the forces of evil are lining up against him.

Rutherford, played by Christian Cooke, isn’t especially keen on this new demand on his time. As a college student he’s already got homework cutting into his goofing off time, and he’s already got a hard enough time focusing on that – especially since one of the distractions is girlfriend Ruby, played by the charming Holly Grainger.

But there’s nothing to be done. Hard as his father worked to hide him, the underworld has worked out who Luke is and has tracked him down to the apartment he shares with his mother.

So with help from a blind mystic called Mina Harker, Luke is armed with a rifle that won’t hurt humans but will disintegrate a demon. Rupert tells Luke there are several classes of demons, and in the course of the pilot episode, we see several.

There’s a demon who looks like a cross between a cat and a monkey. There’s one that looks like a person in a hoodie, but has the face of a rat. That kind shuffles about pretending to be homeless. There’s one who looks not significantly dissimilar to comedian Steven Wright. That one just slinks around being gross, spying on and occasionally attacking people. And there’s one who looks sort of like singer David Bowie with a beak and super long, sharp fingernails.

I haven’t worked out what they all do, specifically, but it’s possible that the David Bowie one has really horrible breath. It’s pretty obvious the Steven Wright one does. Those little cat-monkey things are fast and they’re basically all teeth, so they can bite and chew through anything.

Oh, and they’re everywhere. Why haven’t you seen and been attacked by them, you ask? Well, Rupert explains, in a larger city, rats outnumber humans 60 to 1, and you almost never see them, but there’s almost always one to be found right nearby. And some of them are right out in the open but their social skills are lacking, to say the least. In that some of them are attacking and killing humans and generally making their presence known as they begin to focus their attentions on him, Luke feels compelled to help with the fight.

Someone described the show as “’Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but with a boy.” I don’t know if that’s fair. It’s true that setting the late Van Helsing’s workshop as a library, and naming someone called “Rupert” as mentor to the cute and easily distracted young person infused with superpowers to face down the forces of darkness is a bit suspect. And it’s true these are the same people who wrote “Hex” (never seen it) and “Merlin” (saw it – can’t recommend it). All that being said, I for one am looking forward to seeing where they go with this.

“Demons” airs Saturdays at 8 p.m. on BBC America, preceded, in case you missed it, with an encore of the episode from the week before.

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