7 / 10. A quirky little supernatural gem. Entertaining with some of the charm of True Blood, but unfortunately not enough to keep it going.

NBC’s supernatural drama Midnight, Texas is a little gem. It doesn’t take itself too seriously and has some of the southern charm and likeable, quirky characters typical of Charlaine Harris’s work, it’s just not up to the same level that made True Blood so popular and lacks much of the humour therein.

In season one, psychic Manfred, urged by his grandmother’s ghost, Xylda, visits the mysterious Midnight, Texas to get help from its bizarre ensemble of residents. They include a vampire, a witch, a fallen angel, a half-demon and a were-tiger. Yes, that’s right. The town encounters various unearthly threats and Manfred and his new community protect it.

It tried a bit too hard at the start of season 1 but found its feet as the season progressed in entertaining stand-alone episodes, including; evil biker gangs, werewolves, vampire fight clubs and angel bounty hunters. However, the season conclusion fizzled out ...

My favourite characters were Lem (Peter Mensah, perfectly cast as a vampire) and Olivia (the also well cast Arielle Kebbel). Their odd couple worked, and I cared about their story.

The unfortunately monikered Manfred’s psychic skills are pivotal to the over-arching plot of the show and Francois Arnaud is good here, but lacks the charisma that he displayed in buckets as Cesare in The Borgias. Jason Lewis was also well cast as angel Joe, Fiji (Parisa Fitz-Henley) and Bobo (Dylan Bruce) have good chemistry, and Manfred’s grandma ghost, Xylda (Joanne Camp), is a great, funny character.

The show was let down a little by its questionable special effects in season one (for example, Joe’s wings), but these did improve in the next season.

Season two continues with more of the same and introduces the Crystal Spa and its owners, holistic healer Kai (Nestor Carbonell) and his wife Patience (Jaime Ray Newman), but the gang are suspicious of their motives. Meanwhile, Manfred suffers from the after-effects of his demonic possession.

Midnight, Texas was settling into its stride with an enjoyable, barmy, story arc about dark witch origins and the ending sewed together most of the threads. There were some aspects left open to be continued, but it was cancelled. If it were to be picked up by another network, they could get another good season out of it, as there is plenty of source material in the novels.