Strange (BBC1)

THE first episode of this new series about a demon-hunter carried some salutary lessons about keeping yourself safe.

Never walk through a badly-lit underpass after dark. Never believe people who tell you that your small son "is in his room, don't worry". And never use public transport late at night. Otherwise you might find yourself trapped on a bus with dead people and a demon who must feed before midnight (and doesn't fancy kebab and chips).

In other words, keep well away from John Strange - Strange by name, strange by nature - the defrocked priest with mad hair and a female companion once married to a demon and whose son may be a chip off the old demonic block. If you shaved his head, you'd probably find the numbers 666 tattooed on his scalp.

Andrew Marshall's series is promising. I'm not sure this opener takes us any further along than last year's pilot episode, but there's plenty of room for ideas to flourish.

Richard Coyle looks like a cross between an absent-minded professor and a mad scientist, which is just right for Strange the ex-priest whose new calling is hunting down demons. Most of the time his behaviour looks more normal than the shifty doings of Canon Black (the marvellous Ian Richardson at his most seductively sinister). While others collect train numbers, he possesses a list of every demon that walked the earth.

There was a plot in which the corpses of prematurely aged people (TV writers who've spent too long in front of the box, I reckon) caused surprisingly little panic. People went around commenting, "Let's just say it wasn't pretty" after finding bodies as wrinkled as Nora Batty's stockings in the gutter, or muttering, "There's still something out there" before going out to investigate as people are wont to do on programmes like this.

Janus's little devil of a son may have been prime suspect but I worried about the Rev Johnson, amusingly described as "The Rev Happy-Clappy" in honour of his style of church service - all singing and swaying and clapping hands. Not everyone approved, like the observer who joked: "If the good Lord had meant us to play tambourines, he would have chosen 12 gipsies."

Strange is an odd mix of various other fantasy/horror/supernatural films and series. Think The X-Files, Jonathan Creek, The Avengers even, with a bit of The Omen thrown in for good measure. Above all, it's great fun and executed with a good deal of style and convincing special effects.

All that remains to be seen is whether Mr Strange can exorcise the demons known as M.I.T. over on ITV1 at the same time and become a ratings winner. He could just do it - stranger things have happened.

Published: 02/06/2003