Night Stalkin'

It's fairly well known that The X-Files was inspired and influenced by the original Kolchak, the Night Stalker, but they were never really that similar. So it's a bit bizarre to see the new remake of The Night Stalker coming across more as a remake of The X-Files than its actual inspiration. "Spooky" pre-credits sequence? Yup. Strange but brilliant investigator throwing away his promising career to pursue the weirder stories? Yup. Said career move prompted by the mysterious disappearance of a loved one? Yup. A sceptical female partner in a sharp suit? Yup. Little pithy voiceover at the end as the "case file" is typed up? Yup. It really is almost identical to The X-Files, to the extent that it was quite jarring when those little typewritten place/time captions didn't appear at the beginning of each scene.

And how bad is the WB's new Dawson's Creek-with-ghosts show, Supernatural, if the only little positive review soundbite thingies they could get for the trailer come not from newspapers or television magazines, but from the show's own message board? Egad.