20th Anniversary Event, Prince Charles Cinema, London, March 29 2017

Celebrating 20 years since Joss Whedon’s ass-kicking teenage vampire slayer first hit our screens, SyFy and Fandom held a very special event for fans of this enduring franchise.

There’s something mystifying about realising that a show like Buffy is now two decades old. Not just because of the realisation that one is getting older, but also in how fresh – in many ways – the show and its core concepts feel, even today. Joss Whedon may have done work with a greater cult following (witness the emergence of the movie Serenity from the ashes of Firefly – a show cancelled after one short season – thanks to the power of fan demand) and work with a substantially higher return (it’s difficult to imagine that he walked away from a pair of phenomenally successful box office performers like Avengers Assemble and Age of Ultron without a fairly substantive cheque) but it’s doubtful that he’s ever done anything more universally beloved than Buffy.

And events like this showcase that love. The queue already halfway around the block half an hour before opening, it was difficult to credit – on a pure facts and figures basis – that so many people were getting ready to pack out a cinema in Leicester Square to watch a couple of episodes of a show which ended over a decade ago. But here they all were, the dedicated legions who faithfully followed the tribulations of the Scooby Gang for all those years, and who have kept the flame burning since.

Ushered in by the welcoming staff, guests were treated to drinks and food before taking their seats in what turned out to be a packed cinema (so popular was the event, in fact, that the Prince Charles actually ran the episodes on two separate screens, just to make sure that everyone got a seat). Goodie bags contained popcorn, some temporary tattoos and a celebratory ‘I heart Buffy’ T-shirt with the ‘I’ being a stake going through the heart – because of course.

Lights dimmed, we were treated to a video welcome/introduction by the unfortunately unable-to-attend-in-person Anthony Stewart Head, and then the first of the night’s episodes, ‘Once More With Feeling’ began.

It’s difficult to get across just how important this episode is, the impact it had and the achievement it represented on paper. It’s a musical episode, a gimmick so endlessly copied by various other comedy and comic book shows that now it is known as ‘doing a Buffy’. Except here, it’s no gimmick. We get genuine plot, we get progression for the story, we get revelations between characters (most of them uncomfortable). Indeed, the villain’s challenge at the end, that although they’ve beaten him, it’s not exactly a happy ending for any of them, rings true.

But sit in a room full of fans watching the episode, and you’re left in absolutely no doubt just how good it is. An entire room full of strangers, unironically belting out every word of every song in time with the actors, such that the original performances were actually lost, was a glorious thing to behold. Lyrics were running on the screen, but you had the feeling that not a single soul in the room needed them. If churches could bottle what was in that room, the problem of shy, mumbling hymns would be a thing of the past.

A quick interval and then it was time for ‘Chosen’, the epic finale to the show. Lacking the ‘sing-along’ element of the previous episode, this didn’t suffer any in the audience participation stakes. Good natured banter followed certain lines, laughter, shock, upset and more laughter were expressed loudly and collectively. It was the sort of thing you’d hate to experience sitting watching a movie for the first time, but which is only a positive in a room full of people sharing something that they love with one another. As the final credits rolled, there was an eruption of spontaneous applause and cheering, and no doubt in anyone’s mind that, come another twenty years, they’d all happily be back to do it again.

Verdict: A fantastic night out for every type of Buffy fan, from the casual to the hardcore. SyFy and Fandom did an amazing job, as did the venue. And for those who missed out, there’s a whole weekend of Buffy celebrating the birthday this weekend on SyFy, as well as a complete run of the whole show from the very first episode, coming next month. 10/10

Greg D. Smith