The Immortal
"Demons of the Night"

An immortal with long hair and a sword--is this just a Highlander retread?

	The Immortal
	Starring Lorenzo Lamas and Robert Ito
	Syndicated
	Premieres the week of Oct. 2

By Kathie Huddleston

r. Sara Beckman (April Telek) has created a machine to detect demons. While she is testing her invention, several demons attack her van. Believing her life to be in danger, she pulls a gun and shoots a man who appears to be one of her attackers.

The demons vanish, and a young man named Goodwin (Steve Braun) rushes up to attend the injured man, Rafe Cain (Lamas). The men insist that they can't go to a hospital, so Sara takes them to her apartment. Sara soon suspects that something is strange when Rafe heals incredibly quickly.

Sara learns that Rafe is almost 400 years old. He is immortal. His tale began in 17th-century Japan, when the mystical Yashiro (Ito) rescued him after his ship sank. He started over, married, and had a daughter. Life was good.

Demons draw their power from the suffering, anger and grief they inflict on humans, and two very evil demons, Mallos (Dominic Keating) and Vashista (Kira Clavell), murdered Rafe's wife and stole his child. Sworn to avenge his wife's murder and find his child, Rafe was given immortality, only to become forever locked in the battle of good against evil. Rafe knows that should the demons win the battle, the entire human race will be thrust into an overpowering darkness.

With Mallos and Vashista in hot pursuit, Sara joins Rafe and Goodwin in their fight.

Uneven, but promising

The Immortal mixes up mythology from several popular TV shows to create its own. It's a little bit Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Highlander and Brimstone, with comedy and some Matrix action thrown in. The Immortal isn't as artful as those productions. Its seams show. Still, there's nothing like it in syndication right now.

In the two-part pilot, "Demons of the Night," the setup of Rafe's creation as an immortal is poorly done. All the flashbacks are awkward, especially when they're injected into action scenes. However, when The Immortal heads back to the present and focuses on the demons, the show transcends its tight budget. One funny scene has Rafe interrogating a car salesman who is a detacher demon. Different limbs detach from the demon's body until only its head is left. Sometimes, the humor gets lost or isn't funny, and the attempted sexual tension between Sara and Rafe hasn't yet jelled. Still, The Immortal has potential to find a rhythm once all the exposition is out of the way.

As Rafe, Lamas leads the cast. Sword in hand, he convincingly takes down the bad guys. The overly serious backstory exposition doesn't give him much chance to show any knack for comedy, though. Braun has a charmingly natural presence as Goodwin. Sara, played by Telek, isn't a good fit with the other characters, but that may change as the series progresses. Keating and Clavell will have reccurring roles as the deliciously wicked and memorable demons Mallos and Vashista.

The series has promise and, given some time, may be able to stake out a territory in the dark fantasy genre.