We've started watching Angel, Season 1. We've been suffering Buffy withdrawal symptoms and so we're trying the next best thing. So far we've only watched disc 1, but it's interesting to see the differences between the two series.

To me, Angel seems to share far more in common with a police procedural series than it does with Buffy. Yes, there are demons and vampires and all the rest, but take them out--and you can do that--and you're left with standard police drama. Murderers, serial killers, thieves, and the detective hunting them down. The fact that the murderers may be vampires or demons has not so far made a substantive difference to the way the stories have played out.

I think the main reason why this is true of Angel where it wasn't of Buffy comes down to the characters. The characters in Buffy were children, even, effectively, through to the last series. The characters in Angel are adults and are competent. They don't have to contend with the same problems of home, school and emerging hormones that the Buffy characters do. They are without complicating webs around them. Children, led by an initially-empty-headed blonde, fighting nightmare creatures makes for a more horror-fantasy show than Angel does, at least so far.

This, I think, is also the reason that I prefer writing novels about children and teenagers. Children are trapped by so many complicating factors over which they have no control. They are completely in the power of their parents and their schools. They can't walk away. Of course, there are things that trap adults. Angel, for example, is trapped by his guilt over what he did before he regained his soul. But that's less of a substantive, physical, arbitrary external imposition.

In Angel there is also the setting. Grimy Los Angeles against small-(although quickly expanding)-town Sunnydale. It's the home of police drama, with its guns and low lifes and never-ending crime. It just seems more police-y than sleepy but evil-infested Sunnydale.

None of this is to say that I don't like Angel. I think it's a great series. I've really enjoyed the four episodes we've seen and I can't wait to get the rest.

Sadly, not being immensely rich, we are renting the DVD from Amazon. We've set up to do rentals jointly with our friends Justina and Richard. Between us we get 6 DVDs a month. However, series like Angel only come one disc at a time. It's going to take us a long time to get through even part of the whole run of Angel.

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I've been meaning to point out a couple of reviews of my recent Realms of Fantasy story, Crab Apple by Science Fiction Romance and David Roy. Thanks to both.