Blade: The Series (2006)

Blade's feature-length pilot was written by David S. Goyer and Geoff Johns. Goyer was the man responsible/to blame for writing all three of the films, so it made sense to have him script the series beginnings, too. He set it sometime after the events of the shitfest that was Blade: Trinity (2004). Johns is a veteran comic book writer who’d worked on Smallville, so he was no stranger to the crossing of mediums. What they delivered was a smouldering turd, using the same tired clichés we've seen countless times before. But if you watch the pilot and then stop you’ll get the wrong impression of the series as a whole. There’s one other really shitty episode, but the remainder of the series is very different. Sometime around episode three or four things get good, and when events grow more complicated for the characters things get really good.

The biggest problem is Blade himself. Kirk Jones casts an effective silhouette but falls flat when he tries to be menacing. Worse still, he has problems enunciating. I had to pull up subtitles frequently on every episode just to hear what the hell he was mumbling. I'm a fan of foreign cinema, so subtitles don’t faze me, but they really shouldn't have been necessary.

The other characters are better. Blade’s tech-savvy accomplice Shen fills the Whistler role admirably and is occasionally the voice of Blade's conscience.

The vampires have concerns other than the Daywalker. Internal division between the 12 Houses, bitter rivalries and cold ambitions keep them from uniting.

A third factor (a woman) stops things being simply Blade vs Vamps repeatedly; it adds a level of danger and subterfuge that teeters on a very shaky line.

I thoroughly enjoyed the short run the series had, more so than any of the films, and am sad that it was cancelled after just one season. Geoff Johns has been quoted as saying that the reason for it ending was due to rising production costs for the small Spike TV network, not because of viewing figures.

13 fully uncut episodes, approx 40-45 minutes each.

3½ fake tattoos out of 5