Private investigator Mick St. John dreams of being interviewed by a woman off-camera, where he reveals that he is 84 years old,[3] and that unlike other vampires, he does not hunt women, children or innocents. Mick's job leads him to the scene of a murdered young woman, who had been pregnant with twins, and where Beth, an online newspaper reporter for the BuzzWire, notices two large puncture wounds on the woman's neck. While walking around the scene, she meets Mick and tells him he looks very familiar, but he insists that they do not know each other. Beth gives the murder article a vampire theme, using the puncture wounds as inspiration. The article makes Josef, a 400-year-old vampire friend of Mick's, concerned for the safety of vampires. To gather more authentic information about the murder, Mick goes to the morgue, where his friend Guillermo (Jacob Vargas) supplies him with blood. Mick does not detect any traces of vampire contact on the dead woman, eliminating them as her reason of death. Mick then comes across Beth at the dead woman's apartment, where they find a necklace containing a blood vial.
Professor Ellis (Rudolf Martin), a lecturer of the dead woman, gives a eulogy at her funeral. Chloe, a friend of the dead woman, attacks and slashes the neck of Ellis, whose blood Mick recognizes from the vial. Beth tracks down Chloe, who explains that the professor believes he is a vampire and has a vampire-worshipping blood cult. Later, Mick finds Chloe's body and realizes that she was murdered by Ellis. Knowing that Beth has gone to Ellis's class, he rushes to save her. After the class, Beth talks to Ellis about vampires and the young woman's murder, but he discovers that she is wearing a wire. Ellis attacks Beth and although she escapes, she is kidnapped by the professor's assistant. Mick finds the assistant, defeats him, and carries unconscious Beth to his apartment. In flashbacks to 22years in the past, Mick investigates the case of a missing girl. In a domestic fight between Mick and his ex-wife Coraline over the kidnapped girl, Mick stabs Coraline's heart with the leg of a broken chair. He lights the house on fire and rescues the girl, leaving Coraline to the fire. It is revealed that the little girl is Beth, and that Mick has tried to watch over her and keep her safe. In the present, Beth awakens and remembers that Mick was stabbed by the assistant, and that he was the one who saved her as a child. Mick dismisses these claims as being caused by her head injury. Thanking him for saving her, she hugs him.
Production
Rade Šerbedžija was originally cast to play Josef Kostan, but was replaced by Jason Dohring to make way for a younger cast.
Trevor Munson conceived the character of Mick Angel in 2004 and spent two and a half years writing a novel featuring the character. The story was adapted into a feature film script, and Bruce Willis was considered as a possibility for the lead role. The script was shown to Nina Tassler at CBS, who paired Munson with Ron Koslow, creator of Beauty and the Beast, to rewrite the script as a television series.[4] The series was titled Twilight, and Koslow and Munson wrote the pilot, which Warner Bros. Television initially commissioned in January2007 as a presentation lasting 14–20minutes. Joel Silver and Gerard Bocaccio were hired to be executive producers on the project under the former's production banner, Silver Pictures, in the same month.[5] Alex O'Loughlin and Shannon Lucio were cast in the presentation,[6] and Rod Holcomb was hired as director.[7]
The project was renamed Moonlight when picked up by CBS on May14, 2007, prior the upfronts.[8] David Greenwalt, creator of Miracles and co-creator of Angel, joined the staff in May2007 as showrunner and executive producer alongside Silver.[9] CBS hired Greenwalt during the pilot process to restructure the original concept by Koslow and Munson, however health reasons forced him to leave the series,[10] and Chip Johannessen took over showrunner duties in August2007.[11] All of the original actors save for the lead role of Mick St. John were recast in June2007: Shannon Lucio, Rade Šerbedžija and Amber Valletta were originally cast in the roles of Beth Turner, Josef Kostan and Coraline Duvall respectively before Sophia Myles, Jason Dohring and Shannyn Sossamon replaced them.[12][13][14] With an almost entirely different cast, a retooled full-length pilot for television audiences was shot.[15] To promote the series, Silver, along with the rest of the main cast, attended the Comic-Con International in San Diego on July27, 2007, where the show was featured.[16]
According to Dohring, Silver had unexpectedly phoned him and said, "There's a role, and I'm making it younger". Dohring read two pages of script featuring Josef, and was interested by the character's "dark" and "sharp" personality. Dohring had to go through the normal audition process and was not sure if he would have gotten the role without Silver, who had "pushed it all the way through to the end".[10] Munson explained that the goal of the casting changes was "to lighten the show up a bit". He believed the changes granted the studio's and network's wish to "make it a little younger and hipper".[4] O'Laughlin felt that the whole cast's becoming "a little bit younger" especially affected the character Josef, as the originally chosen actor, Šerbedžija, was twice Dohring's age. The creators and the network were concerned that Josef, whose relationship with Mick was important, would appear as more of a "father figure" rather than as a friend. O'Laughlin supported the recasting of Josef with a younger actor due to the resulting "level of ease in that age difference".[17]
Reception
Although reviews of the pilot were generally unfavorable, Jason Dohring was praised by several critics.
"No Such Thing as Vampires" finished first among total viewers and adults 18–49 for its night.[18] It was seen by 8.54million American viewers, and received a 5.7 household rating and a 10% share of all televisions in use.[19] The critical responses to the pilot were overall unfavorable.[20] Several critics compared it detrimentally with the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff Angel,[21][22][23][24][25] as well as other vampire-related media, including Forever Knight,[3][23]Blood Ties,[25]The Night Stalker,[3]Dark Shadows and the works of Anne Rice.[24][26] Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle considered it as a "flat-out awful" pilot of what "may well be the worst new fall show".[27] Rob Owen of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette described the pilot as "a weak, generic private-eye drama with a vampire story overlay",[25] and Matthew Gilbert of the Boston Globe felt that it came close to a "full-on nightmare".[28]
The writing of the pilot was criticized as "ponderous",[22] and having "familiar, conventional plots".[25] One critic claimed it did not offer much "to inspire an actor",[24] while another thought it had the "worst writing of the new season".[27] The dialogue was described as "groan-inducing".[15] Tom Shales of The Washington Post criticized the series creators' decision to make St. John a private investigator, and felt that they "appear eager to avoid what makes their show unique".[29] Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times saw promise in the series, but remarked it got "lost between concept and execution, and instead of suspense we get silliness, as if the creators were determined to use only the clichés of both genres".[30] The acting of the pilot was criticized as "sub-par" and "woeful".[23][27] Robert Bianco of USA Today felt that Moonlight had a "less adept cast" than Angel.[22] Matthew Gilbert of the Boston Globe deprecated the chemistry between O'Loughlin and Myles as "artificial", and said that they "exchange lines of dialogue with a stilted rhythm and no natural flow". O'Loughlin was described as a "flatliner",[24] and "passable in the lead role",[15] while Sossamon's appearance was said to be "preposterously not-scary".[15] Travis Fickett of IGN praised the actors, however, and felt that O'Loughlin did "a decent job", and that Myles was "perhaps the most promising aspect of the show".[31] Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune commended Myles as "reasonably good".[15]
Not all reviews, however, were negative. Sarah Stegall of SF Scope gave the pilot a decent review, and said that if Moonlight could survive "the Friday night time slot" and the "thwarted expectations of [vampire] fans who were expecting Blade", she thought it would "rock".[26] Kara Howland of TV Guide gave the pilot a positive review, and thought it was a "solid start".[3] Several critics praised Jason Dohring's portrayal of Josef. One said that he gave the pilot "a small burst of energy",[24] while another said that he made it "crackle with a bit of wit".[15] Dohring was described as "a welcome presence",[31] and one critic wished for "a bit more screen time".[23] Travis Fickett of IGN praised the action scenes, and noted, "once the action gets started, it plays well".[31]
Martha Mills Noxon is an American television and film writer, director, and producer. She is best known for her work as a screenwriter and executive producer on the supernatural drama series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003). She was also executive producer, writer, and creator of the Bravo comedy-drama series Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce (2014–18) and the Lifetime drama series UnREAL (2015–18), and an executive producer of the CBS medical drama series Code Black (2015–17).
ABC Signature is an American television production studio and the flagship production arm of ABC, which is a subsidiary of Disney Television Studios, a sub-division of the Disney Entertainment business segment and division of The Walt Disney Company.
Joshua Ian Schwartz is an American screenwriter and television producer. He is best known for creating and executive producing the Fox teen drama series The O.C. which ran for 4 seasons. Schwartz is also known for developing The CW's series Gossip Girl based on the book of the same name and for co-creating NBC's action-comedy-spy series, Chuck.
Sophia Myles (;) is an English actress. She is best known in film for portraying Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward in Thunderbirds (2004), Isolde in Tristan & Isolde (2006), Darcy in Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014), Erika in Underworld (2003) and Underworld: Evolution (2006) and Freya in Outlander (2008).
Jason William Dohring is an American stage, television and voice actor who is best known for his role as Logan Echolls on the television show Veronica Mars and the 2014 film continuation as well as his roles as Josef Kostan on Moonlight (2007), Adam Carpenter on Ringer (2011), Detective Will Kinney on The Originals (2013) and Chase Graves on iZombie (2015). He is also known as the voice of Terra, one of the main protagonists of the Kingdom Hearts franchise (2010–2019).
Shannon Lucio is an American actress.
Glenn Gordon Caron, sometimes credited as Glenn Caron, is an American writer, director, and producer, best known for the television series Moonlighting in the 1980s and Medium in the 2000s. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
Alex O'Loughlin is an Australian actor, writer, director, and producer, who portrayed Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett on CBS' remake of the TV series Hawaii Five-0 (2010–2020). He had starring roles in the films Oyster Farmer (2004) and The Back-up Plan (2010), as well as on such television series as Moonlight (2007–2008) and Three Rivers (2009–2010).
Life Is Wild is an American drama television series adapted by Michael Rauch, George Faber and Charlie Pattinson from the British drama Wild at Heart. The show is about a New York veterinarian who moves his second wife and their two sets of children to a South African game reserve run by his former father-in-law.
Moonlight is an American paranormal romance television drama created by Ron Koslow and Trevor Munson, who was also executive producer for all episodes with Joel Silver, Gerard Bocaccio, Gabrielle Stanton and Harry Werksman. The series follows private investigator Mick St. John, who was turned into a vampire by his bride Coraline on the couple's wedding night fifty-five years earlier. In the present day, he struggles with his attraction to a mortal woman, Beth Turner, his friendship with his mentor and fellow vampire Josef Kostan, and his dealings with other vampires in Los Angeles.
Allison Beth Adler is a Canadian-American television producer and writer. She is the co-creator of Supergirl and The New Normal, and is also known for her work on Chuck and Family Guy.
David Blue is an American actor. He is known for his portrayal of Cliff St. Paul on Ugly Betty, Eli Wallace on the Syfy series Stargate Universe, and Rick Twitler on both Nickelodeon's Henry Danger and Danger Force.
"Out of the Past" is the second episode of the first season of the American supernatural television drama Moonlight, which premiered on CBS on September 28, 2007 in the United States. It was written by David Greenwalt and directed by Fred Toye.
Jeff Davis is an American writer and television producer. He is best known for creating the drama series Criminal Minds and Teen Wolf.
"Sonata" is the season and series finale of the American paranormal romance television drama Moonlight, which first aired on CBS on May 16, 2008 in the United States. It was written by Ethan Erwin and Kira Snyder, and directed by Fred Toye. The series revolves around Mick St. John, a private investigator who has been a vampire for over fifty years. When a vampire threatens to name all the vampires of Los Angeles, Mick is helped by his girlfriend Beth Turner and the rest of the vampires to track her down.
Up All Night is an American television sitcom created by Emily Spivey that aired on NBC from September 14, 2011, to December 13, 2012. The show starred Christina Applegate, Will Arnett, Jennifer Hall, Luka Jones, and Maya Rudolph.
The first season of the American television series Person of Interest premiered on September 22, 2011, and ended on May 17, 2012. The season is produced by Kilter Films, Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. Television, with Jonathan Nolan, Greg Plageman, J. J. Abrams, and Bryan Burk serving as executive producers and Plageman serving as showrunner.
John Patrick Glenn is an American screenwriter, producer, and director.
The Neighborhood is an American television sitcom created by Jim Reynolds that premiered on CBS on October 1, 2018. The series follows a white Midwestern family as they adjust to moving into a predominantly black neighborhood in Pasadena, California. It stars Max Greenfield, Cedric the Entertainer, Hank Greenspan, Sheaun McKinney, Marcel Spears, Beth Behrs, and Tichina Arnold. In January 2023, the series was renewed for a sixth season, which premiered on February 12, 2024. In April 2024, the series was renewed for a seventh season which is set to premiere on October 21, 2024.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
