Firebite

It's really not a terrible show - it's just not too exciting or great either.

The plot and characters feels re-used from a thousand other stories, the acting is quite ok and the special effects are kinda bland.

Having said that, it's watchable. It just won't blow your mind in any way or make you desperate for the next episode.

5/10.

Structurally quite flabby and endearingly cheap at times but Firebite is a genuinely interesting new take on vampire lore aided by some strong central characters (and performances) that really make it worth sticking with. A potential cult classic in the making.

I like the premise of Firebite - its a great take on an old and well exploited trope - and no doubt a useful way to make use of old opal mines to boot.

There is a BUT though, and that relates to script development, which for me doesn't make the most of either the setup or characters. There is also an air of predictability, but I can forgive it for that - mostly.

With more work this show could have easily been an 8, but for me the script limitations hold back and compromise it - that being said I'll keep watching to see how it might improve.

Visually great, and an interesting setting, but it sort of comes across as ultimately, your cliche bad guy vampires vs some good guy underdogs... not too different to the many straight to video vampire movies.

There's some very heavy handed politics tossed in from the start, (the white people that came to Australia were all vampires apparently) which is clumsy and really, may be of interest to some people, but seems to be oddly shoehorned into the whole thing and is a bit obvious. The messaging could of been done, but may be a bit more subtlely.

The photography and setting is great, and it has a mad max feel.

Storyline wise, its nothing special. Some of the acting isn't great, though overall its ok.

Vampires are a bit cliche.

Overall, could have been better if the villains were a bit less 2D, and if more importance was given to the story than the political messaging.

Caveat - I've only seen one episode, so please take that into consideration when reading this review.

The show focuses on an Indigenous Australian father-daughter team of vampire hunters operating in the area of a series of abandoned opal mines in the Outback. And we have all the usual clichés: dad is a ne'er-do-well who loves his kid but leaves most of the parenting to her, the over-achieving daughter is openly bullied because of her race, the tough-but-kindly ex-girlfriend is picking up the slack, and the vampires were brought to Australia (along with guns and smallpox) by the evil British "colonizers" to subdue the indigenous population. It's a simplistic world view, but since the target audience for this show appears to be young adults, we shouldn't expect Tolstoy.

On the plus side, the acting is competent, the Outback is stunning and the show is at least as good as any of the other vampire-zombie-demon hunting shows out there. And this one has one big plus - it's not one of those shows aimed at young teenagers but peppered with f-bombs and sex scenes that would be inappropriate for the said-same audience.

I will probably update this review after I've had a chance to watch a couple more episodes. But so far I have to say that though it's not great, it's not terrible, either.