Strange Days

So I have been watching this BBC series called Strange (offered on one of the Cinemax bizarro-channels), which is about a defrocked COE vicar who has kind of an amateur interest in hunting demons – every single media product that I have seen for the past two years is about hunting demons.  If you blended in unequal parts Buffy, Angel, The X-Files, Brimstone and the original comic-book version of Constantine, you would get this show exactly.  The hero is actually named John Strange and has some pretty boss hair (see picture).  His demon-hunting team consists of a literally retarded gardener named Kevin, some sort of computer whiz (with a VAIO), and a sarcastic nurse love-interest named Jude whose live-in boyfriend/baby daddy turned out to be Magnavox, Demon of Electricity.
     Each show basically works out as a detective drama in which Strange tries to figure out who the demon is before it kills again.  I’ve only seen a handful of episodes (there are only six total) but I worry that the formula will get tiring – fortunately the writers supply red herrings and sinister bit players a-plenty, so it hasn’t dulled yet.  They’re starting to spark a romance between Strange and Jude, intimations of a dead ex-fiancée are surfacing, and the villain, Canon Black, is fronting on mad sinister machinations.  It’s filmed in delightful BBC-o-vision, which is not as good as HBO but is better than broadcast, and if someone walks into the room they will assume that you’re watching Poirot or Miss Marple.  Also, hella Church of England inside jokes.  If you get Cinemax Eight: The Ocho, be certain that you will wile away many a happy hour on Strange.  Be sure to marvel somewhat at the competent yet unexciting special effects.
     Also I watched literally eight hours of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy.  Not as good as I originally thought – I must have managed to catch the three best episodes or something.  Other than a sublime episode about an invisible duck which turned into a 25-minute extended fart joke, it was pretty much a waste of time.