For all its many, many problems, there is really only one reason that this series failed to capture the hearts and minds of vampire-loving TV viewers and critics everywhere when it aired on CBS in 2007. Alex O’Loughlin. A less charismatic, less convincing leading man is hard to fathom; he is to acting what John Kerry is to politics, what Jon Gosselin is to reality TV (and fatherhood). Sure, he’s kind of good looking. But Justin Beiber is good looking, yet you wouldn’t have him head up a dark paranormal romance detective series, would you? (Although… I dunno. Maybe some would. On the Disney Channel, anyway.)

O’Loughlin plays Mick St. John, a vampire who was sired on his wedding night to the tempestuous Coraline (Shannyn Sossamon), and is none too happy about it. Mick has spent his 50 something years of unlife in denial, and now wants nothing more than to be human again (natch). He is a Private Detective stalking the mean streets of Los Angeles, solving crimes and punishing wrongdoers and facing his past all the while falling in love with internet tabloid reporter Beth Turner (Sophia Myles), a woman he has known since she was a child.

So dull. And, y’know, creepy.

His friend and mentor, Josef Kostan, is anything but dull, and is certainly not creepy. Played by Jason Dohring to devastating effect, Josef is zest-filled Lestat to Mick’s whiny Louis, and Dohring is -- to paraphrase Team America -- Cuba Gooding to O’Loughlin’s Ben Affleck. So much better he needs a bigger part. In fact, the only time Mick is remotely engaging is when he is locked in a verbal tussle with this urbane best-friend and mentor, the centuries-old Young Turk industrialist with the sweet smile and ineffable charm.

Of the other cast, Sophia Myles is perfectly serviceable, if at times a little shrill, as love interest Beth, but is not given much of anything to do except pout, frown, look aghast, tear up, make doe-eyes and somehow luck her way into a job way beyond her nominal abilities.

But Shannyn Sossamon plays troubled vampire-turned-human Coraline with spell-binding instability, which has become something of a specialty of hers (witness her appearance as dead girl walking in Dirt), and David Blue, pre-Eli Wallace, turns in a very amusing performance as a different sarcastic techno-nerd in his too-few episodes as boffin vampire Logan Griffen. (Logan! Echoes of Jason Dohring’s beloved Veronica Mars bad boy, perchance?)

Despite these bright lights in the darkness, it should have come as no surprise to anyone that Moonlight didn’t even manage a single full season. Hampered as it was by the ill-fated Writer’s Strike of 2007-08, it is still unlikely that it would have graduated to a sophomore season--which is kind of paradoxical, considering its sophomorish quality. Aside from the diverse incompetencies of O’Loughlin, the show also suffered from inconsistent scripting and some truly tedious flashbacks. And much of the dialogue was especially cringe-worthy, including almost everything out of Mick St. John’s mouth. Quite how the writers of the show managed to give Josef such still-funny lines as “You know, prom wasn't really big back in the 1700s. High school either. The plague, the plague was big,” and yet have their lead mumble such clankers as “I guess I am a delicate flower,” is quite baffling.

So, is Moonlight worth watching? I’m gonna go with yes, just for the pleasure of Jason Dohring’s company. But if you’ll take my advice, get it on DVD (or DVR it from its new home on The CW -- it started airing alongside reruns of The Vampire Diaries on Thursdays at 9, which began June 3), and then fast forward your way through any scene in which Dohring, Sossamon or Blue are absent. You can pretend it’s a whole different show: The Josef, Coraline and Logan Show.

Pity they didn’t make that one instead; it may even have managed to earn itself a Season 2, even if each episode would only have been about 10 minutes long.

  -- Rachel Hyland

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