'Vampire Academy', From 'The Vampire Diaries' Crew, Also Embraces Grand Mythos and Cheesy Tropes: TV Review

To paraphrase (extremely) Benjamin Franklin: nothing is certain in storytelling except love, death and vampires combined the two. Over the past 30 years, more or less a "True Blood", some of the most popular TV interpretations of one of the world's oldest mythical creatures have tended to lean towards the teenage variety, be it brave and marked by battle ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer") or whimsical and nostalgic ("The Vampire Diaries"). Now Peacock's "Vampire Academy" from "Vampire Diaries" co-creator Julie Plec and producer by "The Originals" Marguerite MacIntyre, combines all of the above into a single package that ends up being quite intriguing, if inevitably cheesy in its attempts to stand out among the fray.

With the help of a dark and brutal opening explanation, the series immediately immerses us in a centuries-old history society of three co-existing vampire species: the magical "Moroi" aristocrats, the half-Moroi, half-human "Dhampir" tasked with protecting them, and the savage "Strogoi", more zombie than vampire, posing a constant threat outside the fortress walls. Adapted from the novels by Richelle Mead, 'Vampire Academy' houses an unlikely pair of best friends - Princess Moroi Lissa (Daniela Nieves) and trainee Dhampir Rose (Sisi Stringer) - as the focal point of a larger narrative about all the alliances and hostilities between vampire factions begin to show their cracks.

Beneath all the fantasy jargon and budget banter, there are strains of class conflict that give to “Vampire Academy” a little something extra. Alongside Rose, a black woman whose mother (Lorna Brown) is a Guardian legend, all Dhampirs – like competitors Rose Mason (Andrew Liner) and Meredith ( Rhian Blundell) – are coded as staunchly working-class compared to Lissa's circle of nobles, including the formidable Queen (Pik Sen Lim), Lissa's godfather, Victor (J. August Richards), and Jesse (Joseph Ollman), the "wicked rich boy with daddy issues" from the series.(In case you couldn't guess already, let there be no doubt that "Gossip Girl" was on the vision board for "Vampire Academy" .)

Despite sharing surprisingly little screen time together given that Rose and Lissa's friendship is seemingly the anchor of the entire show, Nieves and Stringer find enough chemistry to make their total devotion to each other ring true. They each have their own forbidden love interests: for Rose, the most experienced Guardian, Dimitri (Kieron Moore); for Lissa, the Christian social outcast (Andre Dae Kim). "Vampire Academy" has never met a couple attracting the opposites it didn't want to create: there's also the eccentric Sonya (Jonetta Kaiser) and the smitten Dhampir Mikhail (Max Parker), as well as the evil sister Sonya, Mia (Mia McKenna-Bruce) and Meredith, rougher around the edges. The pairings become more predictable as the episode progresses, but "Vampire Academy" wastes no time in making it clear that any combination of these characters could end up eventually, following typical teen drama protocol. Still: Nieves and Stringer have the strongest spark between them, should there ever be a world in which Lissa and Rose's close relationship becomes less than platonic.

Plec and MacIntyre — not to mention "Angel" alum Richards — are no strangers to vampire shows , and do their best to differentiate "Vampire Academy" from the rest of their prolific slate by embracing its larger, more formal genre of mythology. And yet, the series feels utterly familiar, from its sweet remix of teenage relationships to building vampire grandeur and fearsome monsters under clear budget constraints. All the stylized achievement and choppy world editing can't distract from the less-than-inspiring fight choreography anchoring many episodes for broken sets; the acting is uniformly passable, with an occasional sharp moment from Stringer, Richards, or Kaiser. But if you're generally a fan of teen melodramas, especially ones that weave magic and myth into every tense interaction, "Vampire Academy" might just do the trick.

'Vampire Academy' will air Thursday, September 15 on Peacock. < /p>