Midnight, Texas is adapted from the first of a trilogy by Charmaine Harris. The books are great, arguably better than the Southern Vampire Mysteries (filmed as True Blood) in focus and execution. Where those sprawled out ever further, Midnight remains, fundamentally, about a small town in Texas. In fact, it’s a very small town in Texas.

And possibly the most important place in the world.

Manfred Bernardo (Francois Arnaud) is a psychic. An actual psychic. Accompanied by the ghost of his dead grandmother, Manfred flees from bad debts and worse choices and hides out in Midnight. There, his true nature is not only quickly discovered but embraced. Because Midnight has a small group of inhabitants who are just as strange as Manfred. Olivia Charity (Arielle Kebbel) is a contract killer. Her lover Lemuel Bridger (Peter Mensah) is a pacifist vampire who has taught himself to drain negative emotion rather than energy. Manfred’s landlord Bobo Winthrop (Dylan Bruce) is a sweet, kind man who is on the run from his family of white supremacists. Fiji Cavanaugh (Parisa Fitz-Henley) is a witch with incredible power while the Rev (Yui Vazquez) is a serious, dutiful man of the cloth with a very dark secret.

Oh and there’s Joe (Jason Lewis) and Chuy (Bernardo Saracino), Mr Snuggly (Joe Smith), Fiji’s cat and Creek Lovell (Sarah Ramos) whose family’s secret may be the darkest of all.

All this and the end of the world too.

Midnight distinguishes itself straight away because of three elements: great writing, a genuine sweet nature, and the sheer strength of the cast. There isn’t a weak link amongst them and crucially they all get moments in the spotlight. Manfred is always the lead but he’s never the sort of go-it-alone hero who doesn’t need people. Every time the Midnighters fight, they fight together. Every time they fight together, they win. It plays a little like a really cheerful, affirming version of Nightbreed and the show has a lot of fun with this concept. Especially how grumpy Lemuel gets when moving around during the day…

That strength is reflected in the way that the show binds their personal stories to the larger tapestry. Fiji and Bobo’s impossibly sweet romance is a great example of this as it becomes vital to the uber plot in the final episodes. Likewise, Lemuel’s frustration at his own nature, the Rev’s crushing guilt at what he has to do, and the relationship between Lemuel and Olivia and how it evolves. In each case, the individual plot reflects a part of the whole. In each case, that plot is resolved at tremendous speed but with equally tremendous attention to character, action and consequence. Monica Owusu-Breen, showrunner and frequent writer, has a clear love for these characters and a tremendous eye for pacing and dialogue. As a result, the show sprints but never stumbles and there’s never the slightest hint of anything being sacrificed for the sake of the plot.

There are some weak points of course, with Creek being especially poorly served, but the show’s small focus means that even that is usually contextualised. Better still, even in its weaker episodes this is still both a tremendous show and a tremendously kind one.

Verdict: Midnight, Texas is about finding home, about the family we choose. It’s spiky, funny, difficult and genuine. It absolutely deserves another season and, we hope, will get one, because we really want to see who just bought that hotel… 8/10

Alasdair Stuart