Vampire Diaries Bloody Good Fun

The Vampire Diaries, which premieres tonight on the CW, has its finger on the pulse of American youth, delivering a teen-vampire love story that gives Twilight a run for its money:

• “Let the other franchises sniff with disdain at moldy old genre conventions,” writes Mary McNamara in the Los Angeles Times. “This “good old-fashioned love story with vampires knows precisely what it is—a Gothic romance—and doesn't try to be anything else.”

• Director Kevin Williamson "understands the modern American teenager more fully” than Twilight author Stephenie Meyer, notes Ginia Bellafante of the New York Times. The show has “an engrossing moodiness” conveyed without letting Williamson’s “cheekiness go undetected.”
• “Somewhere, somehow, somebody has invented a computer program to predict the most effective way to pander to teens,” observes Paige Wiser in the Chicago Sun-Times. “The CW knows what it's doing.”

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