What is wrong with Demons?

Mina Harker – blind pianist with handy flashbacks about the bad guys

I’ve waited a while before posting about the now 3 week old ITV drama, Demons, as I wanted to like this and not say anything negative about it, but oh, what did they do wrong? Based on the premise that Dracula wasn’t quite as fictional as it’s meant to be, Luke Van Helsing is the teenage descendant of the original Van Helsing, battling ‘half-lifes’ through the streets and sewers of London. It sounds quite good doesn’t it, vampires, monsters, London, sewers, a rather cool underground library set, Victor Meldrew being a rather good zombie vicar, it all sounds interesting doesn’t it? Maybe a teensy bit like a Brit version of Buffy but they’ve mucked it up or something terrible, I don’t know what they’re doing with it. The first episode was awful, jarring incidental music, horrible quick cut editing, not particularly gripping storyline and not particularly impressive bad guys who looked and acted like they’d escaped from a pantomime but the second episode was so much better, genuinely chilling, with a storyline about a demon masquerading as an angel tempting children away, the music wasn’t quite so jarring, the cutting not quite so headache inducing, there was hope that they’d taken this really good concept and were doing something good with it. But then there was the third episode (last Saturday’s), they’d let the pantomime bad guys out again and closely following them was the bad music and bad editing guys. I wanted to like this but they’re making it difficult.