SLAY IT AGAIN

Once the ultimate cult character, Buffy The Vampire Slayer is now a fully fledged icon.  But four years on, is she losing her bite? by Janine Gibson.

It's a bit like the moment your dad started humming along to the Spice Girls.  Far from being a cultural high point, the moment that SUNDAY TIMES arts critic Brian Appleyard dropped his weekly analysis of post-structuralism and turned over two pages in breathless tribute to the sheer brilliance that is a teenage vampire slayer must surely be the beginning of the end.

Clearly the possibility that Mr Appleyard has been possessed by the demon spirit Moloch cannot be overlooked.  But if, after 80-odd episodes, the highbrow establishment has finally caught on to the fact that a smartly written sci-fi, horror or fantasy series might just be a metaphor, then we must resist the temptation to mock.  Buffy The Vampire Slayer has withstood greater threats than this - the opening of the hellmouth on her graduation day from high school and nearly being axed after just 11 episodes, to name just two.

In fact it's rather appropriate that the grown-ups have suddenly got with the programme, for so, as we enter season five, has the world's oldest vampire.  Yes, Vlad the Impaler, Count Dracula of Transylvania, has woken up to the world's leading slayer and decides to pay a visit to Sunnydale to convince Buffy that the two are soul mates - with a love that, naturally, spans time, geography and the small matter of being undead.

It might also be possible to interpret episode one of the new series as the writers getting cocky.  Rewriting Bram Stoker must have seemed like a challenge.  And so, up pops the auld enemy, and who can blame him?  Five minutes into the show, there's this leather-clad wee blonde girl in that state of undernourishment which is considered healthy only in Hollywood, kicking ass and taking responsibility for the world's ills.  No wonder Nosferatu wants a piece.  "I am Dracul," he drawls, all eastern European seductiveness.  Ooh, colour me impressed, reads the response from the Valley girl.

After four years, BUFFY's preternaturally smart writers seem determined to acknowledge that Sunnydale's combination of a monster of the week with a parallel teen crisis was becoming a tad predictable.  Giles the watcher is visibly suffering some ennui (unsurprisingly, as he barely seemed to leave his condo last series) and threatens to head back to England, retirement and Gold Blend ads.  This prompts his search for a new career (prompting Buffy to ask "How bored were you last year?").

But it's Buffy's latest love-interest, poor old Riley, who's beginning to look incongruous.  Given the tough job of following now-he's-good-now-he's-bad Angel, Riley was always going to find it hard to match the love that dare not speak its name.  And God knows there's nothing like a bit of pale-faced yearning over centuries for a passion that sates the inner turmoil to make a girl feel special.  So when Buffy succumbs to Dracula's initial advances and spends the next day using the lamest "scarf over the love-bite" disguise in an attempt to hide her vampiric encounter from her boyfriend, you don't need to be Brian Appleyard to see through the metaphor.

"Last night..." she breathes at Dracula after their mutual blood has been let, "it's not going to happen again..."  Moral: one-night stands can leave you feeling a bit cheap and vulnerable to the influence of the undead.

Desperate both on and off-screen to emphasise how integral they are to the success of the slayer, Buffy's sidekicks are determined to make their presence felt this season.  This is a crucial time for Buffy and the Scooby gang - the team has to recreate the ensemble feeling to ensure enough characters equals enough storylines equals enough legs to reach the all-important seventh series.  For those who aren't Hollywood players, that's when syndication becomes a serious money-maker and you can retire on the repeat fees.

When everyone left high school, the focal location of the show disappeared - like losing Central Perk from the set of FRIENDS.  To correct this, moves are made early in this series to create a new base-camp for the slayer-ettes, and some new characters are introduced.  A previously unheard-of little sister, Dawn, pops up out of nowhere and conveniently returns the much-missed high school element.

One might suppose that, at 14, Dawn has been brought in as an insurance policy against the increasing stardom of Buffy herself, that FHM favourite, Sarah Michelle Gellar.  So far, the high-kicking one has confined her extra-BUFFY activities to some cool cameos (SCREAM 2 and SHE'S ALL THAT) and second-tier teen flicks (I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER and CRUEL INTENTIONS), along with the dire SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE in which she plays a chef with mystical powers.  But she's heading for her mid-20s now, and has a babe film-star boyfriend in Freddie Prinze Jr, so the possibility that she might just pick a blinding script and move into the big league can't have escaped the producers.  Whedon, himself a veteran of two of the least distinguished movies ever made (TITAN AE and WATERWORLD) and two of the best (TOY STORY and SPEED) must also be on the prowl for greater glory.

It will be a sad day, no doubt about it. But there must be at least one more season to come after this, if the cast hold to their original seven-year contracts. And then there's always the repeats on BBC2 for Mr Appleyard to catch up on. BACK TO THE TOP