The Vampire Diaries

You will want all the extras who played vamps on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (which was great, by the way, and not to be blamed for this lackluster cousin) to return en masse to eat the cast of "Vampire Diaries," plus any remaining scripts.

Pretty, sensible teenage vampires who talk like depressed extras on "Hannah Montana"? Why, Diary? Why?

Where is that Buffy chick when you need her?

Williamson and Julie Plec--working from L.J. Smith's books, which actually preceded "Twilight"--mix these familiar elements into a crimson cocktail that even gets reasonable mileage out of its cliches, which ought to give this early riser a chance to establish some fan loyalty before the other networks launch their Thursday lineups.

There’s an engrossing moodiness to Mr. Williamson’s latest venture, but one he conveys without annulling the pact he long ago made with himself never to let his cheekiness go undetected.

The pop allusions (to Carson Daly, Alfred Hitchcock) and the fog-machine-based production design are flat and unambitious. But “The Vampire Diaries’’ nonetheless satisfactorily opens up yet another TV world of heightened youth, where blood-sucking is a metaphor for a whole range of fears and desires.

Since there's no "Twilight" movie in theaters right now, there's no point in resisting The Vampire Diaries, some prefab filler premiering tonight.

I expected more sparky wordplay from a Williamson show, but the Vampire Diaries pilot is pretty limp and lifeless in that department. The attractive cast is... attractive. Let's be kind and say that they are not all blessed with the same level of competence in the acting department.

In between bouts of underage drinking, texting, girl-bonding, and the inevitable minor-key whine of a soundtrack, that is. "True Blood Lite" or "Transylvania 90210." And you know what? It is. Almost exactly. But this is not a bad thing, not a bad thing at all. Because Vampire Diaries knows precisely what it is--a Gothic romance--and doesn't try to be anything else.

No, it's not Twilight--but it's not bad, either. The Vampire Diaries, The CW's new fang-gang drama, successfully hitches the sanguinary sexuality of the vampire ethos to the in-group/out-group dynamic of the teen soap.

By staking turf between "True Blood" and "Twilight," Vampire Diaries hopes it has found the promised land. The danger is it could also be no man's land.

These killers are more fun than a cemetery full of psycho zombie killers on Halloween.

Damon ("Lost's" Ian Somerhalder) complains. "Remember, Stefan--it's important to stay away from fads." If only the CW would listen.

Williamson also wrote the "Scream" trilogy, but there's neither humor nor horror here, unless you count some of the acting and casting.

As teen shows go, the pilot is entertaining enough; future episodes will reveal if the show truly has much bite.

It’s not that The Vampire Diaries is a truly terrible show. It’s just so insipid and uninspired.

Competent as Vampire may be, there's also something rehashed and filtered about it, to the point where it sometimes feels like the kiddie-ride version of "True Blood," and perhaps appropriately so.

CW's version details the dull, dull doings of the world's clammiest vamps, who may flash fangs and skulk around in dark cemeteries (ever see a bright one?) but who come up fatally flat in terms of mayhem and menace.

A tolerably flavorsome ball of crimson bubblegum.

I’ve got nothing against Vampire Diaries. Since it lacks broad appeal and hasn’t a clever bone in its body, it will probably be a hit, unlike CW shows I’ve stuck up for (like “Reaper” and “Aliens in America”).