DEMONS follows hot on the heels of our current (and longstanding) UK obsession for TV drama that focuses on anything supernatural. I'm a fan of all things SF and horror, but even I'm tired of the endless parade of poor quality UK produced genre programming that's been churned out for the past few years - we used to be SO GOOD at it, but these days we stink, and DEMONS is the worst smell to date! Unfortunately it also follows the UK TV trend of the past few years for casting bland uncharismatic actors in roles that need way more interest to sustain the viewer. The plot is simply based on the MIB premise of "smiting inhumans" (yes, "smiting") to protect us from them; only instead of aliens these are supposedly various forms of 'demons' - actually very unscary very cheap CGI and sad make-up miscreants that verge on the laughable. And guess what - the dull teenaged central protagonist is related to Van Helsing (yawn!). The script is painful. The story ponderous. The characters so dreadfully lacklustre. Philip Glenister plays the Helsing boy's mentor 'Rupert' and he's cringingly achingly bad in the role, so much so that I won't be watching the show again. He uses a dreadful fake Sam Spade type accent (why, oh why?), has zero dynamism, and his delivery is completely tired and wooden - almost as though he's hating everything about the role and wants out. He was GREAT playing Gene Hunt in UK TV's hit series 'Life on Mars', but in DEMONS he's terrible. This first episode was immediately forgettable; therefore it has failed - the purpose being to build audience attention from the get go - even though it has its own ITV website, online game, forums, and the usual obligatory interactive junk set up for it, surely this won't be enough to save it for a second series? Perhaps the show will improve as the characters develop, but with the clunking miscast weight of Glenister dragging it down it's going to be a very hard uphill struggle! Such a shame the UK has failed yet again to deliver the quality of genre TV programming produced by the USA, Australia, and Canada.
Review of Demons
