Mick St. John is a private detective. And a vampire. If you are watching Moonlight you have to brace yourself for a lot of dark and brooding yet heroic vampire detective stuff. What else is needed in a cliché private investigator story? Yep, right: a woman. And since it’s a vampire story, this woman – naturally – has to be human and in some predestined way meant to be the woman for whom the vampire has been waiting for the past decades. As luck would have it, there also happens to be this other woman and the other guy etc.
Moonlight is a particularly clichéd story and it seems that most of the original viewers weren’t enjoying it that much. Thus the series was axed after Season 1.
But (yes, there is a reason why this review even exists) this can be a fun thing! The story is quite catchy. Mick St. John, played by Alex O’Loughlin, is a good-looking sexy vampire private detective with an interesting background story, which unfolds from episode to episode. Both female characters, Beth and Coraline, who are played by Sophia Myles and by Shannyn Sossamon, are fascinating women who aren’t stupid or damsels in distress all of the time, but in fact are the centre points of the whole Moonlight universe. Even the kind of vampires the series portrays is incredibly clichéd and very uninspiring: sunlight hurts like hell, fire and decapitation are deadly and a stake through the heart immobilises the vamp. Period. On top of it all the show is spiced with that typical wanna-be-human kind of vampire depression and features the well-worn love between vampire and mortal which, let’s be honest, has never stopped any of these love stories before – and we have been enjoying the “I’m no good for you but I’ll kiss you anyway” drama for centuries now. Of course, there has to be a shiny black old timer car, just for style. This being said, I’m quite sad that there is only one season to enjoy.
Personally, I recommend Moonlight for rainy afternoons, if you like a cliché vampire love story spiced up with detective cases.
Sonja Engelhardt is a passionate tv junkie, role-player and gamer. While working as a project coordinator in the IT business, she has a firm background in literature through previous studies in English language and literature and therefore naturally enjoys a good story.
