CBS’s new vampire private eye series, Moonlight, premiered Friday night at 8 o’clock Central time. It’s a watchable series for fans of PI shows and vampires, and I think it has the legs to go beyond the 13-episode order that’s been generated so far.

I had a good time with this one. There’s a lot of familiar stuff here, a loner detective guy who’s afraid to let anyone get too close, yet who’s part of a secret society, and somehow maintains a smart mouth and a sardonic wit about him.

Those things, by the way, are things that I love. So what I love may not be what you’re looking for. I don’t even mind the immediate romance that appears in the offing.

Alex O’Loughlin (we know him here from The Shield) was one of the finalists for the James Bond role that ultimately went to Daniel Craig. On the new series, he plays Mick St. John, a ninety-year-old vampire (kind of young in the tooth, actually) who still feels the pull of being human and negotiates a thin line policing human activity that crosses over into vampire territory. Mick appears to be an enforcement arm for the vampires to prevent the world from finding out about them. But since he doesn’t see humans as prey and evidently still misses being with them, I see the potential for lots and lots of conflict.

Sophia Myles (Underworld, Underworld: Evolution, Dracula) obviously knows her way around vampires. She plays Beth Turner, a reporter for an online scandal newszine that serves up gossip and sensationalism for the sake of sensationalism. There’s more to the relationship between Mick and Beth, and this first episode has a few twists and turns that will probably surprise some folks, so I’m going to leave them intact for you in case you haven’t seen it.

And you should.

Jason Dohring (Veronica Mars) also has an important role that appears to be ongoing. He’s Josef Konstantin, the oldest vampire that Mick knows. Evidently he’s a mover and a shaker among the vampire community as well as a go-between for Mick.

The initial episode deals with vampires and vampire wannabes. It had to in order to expose both sides of the coin. As Mick states in the dream-induced interview at the beginning of the episode, he would love to set people straight on the facts about vampires, but he can’t.