Cancelled Too Soon: Moonlight (2007)

2007’s Moonlight delivered a promising and stylized supernatural drama, but it did not receive support from its network which had an aversion to genre shows.

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What Is It?

This series focuses on a vampire named Mick St. John who chooses not to feed on the innocent and who works as a private investigator.  He also keeps a close eye on the human woman Beth Turner whom he saved as a child.  She works as a reporter for BuzzWire, and assists Mick from time to time with his cases, including one that reveals that his ex-wife–the vampire that turned him–could still be alive.

Aired:  CBS, 2007-08, 1 Season Totaling 16 Episodes

Created By: Ron Koslow, Trevor Munson

Starring:  Alex O’Loughlin, Sophia Myles, Jason Dohring

Why Was It Cancelled?

In 2007, before Twilight fever had spread across the country and turned vampires into emo icons for the young adult crowd, this series bowed on CBS in the Friday night hour following that network’s popular supernatural series Ghost Whisperer. The idea for the show started as a novel by creator Trevor Munson (later published as Angel of Vengeance) and then was adapted into a screenplay (he allegedly wanted Bruce Willis to play the lead).  But an executive at CBS convinced Munson to turn the script into a TV series pilot and Beauty and the Beast creator Ron Koslow was brought in to assist.

When the series debuted, it pulled decent ratings, but the numbers began to slip off and it started to lose some of the audience from its Ghost Whisperer lead-in.  Then the writers’ strike hit and this show–like most other scripted series–disappeared for several months during the 2007-08 season.  Moonlight was one of the few to get a handful of episodes tacked on after the strike ended, but when it returned its numbers dipped further and CBS elected not to bring it back for a second season.

The show had developed a loyal and vocal fanbase, and they organized blood drives across the country to support it and convince CBS to give it a second chance.  That was not sufficient to change the decision of the network executives, and the series remained cancelled.  However, the network would then continue to struggle with the 9 PM hour on Fridays in the seasons to come, slotting in other shows that drew even lower numbers than what Moonlight had seen.  If CBS had kept the show around, it might have performed well enough in that hour paired with Ghost Whisperer that it could have survived several more seasons.  But that network has long shown an aversion to genre shows and this one joined other casualties from that time such as Jericho and Eleventh Hour.

Should It Be Rebooted?

It would certainly be a shame to reboot the show seeing as one of its strengths was its cast, particularly Alex O’Loughlin (who would go on to greater success with CBS on the Hawaii Five-O reboot). But seeing as Moonlight is a vampire series, it makes a revival very difficult to do because nearly sixteen years have passed since it last aired and the actors who played immortal characters have all aged. A complete reboot would be possible and allow a rather promising show a second chance, possibly following closer to the book by Trevor Munson. But could they strike gold a second time with the casting? And considering that the show is mostly forgotten at this point, it seems unlikely to get pegged as a reboot candidate.

Where Can You Watch It?

The entire series was released on DVD, but that has gone out of print and it is now fetching pretty high prices from third-party sellers. It was available to stream for free (with ads) on CWSeed, but it is no longer on that platform or any other streaming service. You can purchase it VOD from sellers like Apple

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