Angel (David Boreanaz) wasn’t the first crime-fighting vampire to have his own TV show. A good seven years before Joss Whedon sent his 240-year-old bloodsucker to fight evil in Los Angeles, another fanged detective had already staked his claim in the world of undead police procedurals.
If you take a quick glance at its premise, the ’90s cult classic “Forever Knight” — one of the most underrated fantasy shows of all time — sounds like it served as the blueprint for “Angel.” In 1989, CBS released “Night Knight,” a made-for-TV thriller starring “Jessie’s Girl” singer Rick Springfield as a crimefighting creature of the night. The idea of a centuries-old vampire working as a modern-day police officer was too good to stay dead, so, in 1992, the idea was resurrected as a series.
This time, Geraint Wyn Davies stepped into the title role of Nick Knight, an 800-year-old vampire working the night shift as a homicide detective in Toronto. Throughout the show, Nick, who had been a knight named Nicholas in the Middle Ages, uses his supernatural abilities to solve crimes and protect the innocent. Much like Angel, Nick has grown weary after years of violence and bloodshed and now walks the path of redemption; his ultimate goal is to find a way to reverse his vampirism and become human again.
Forever Knight reviews accuse Angel of heavily borrowing from the show
“Forever Knight” was a modest hit on release, and it lasted for three seasons and 70 episodes before the coffin closed for good in 1996. It currently holds a 7.6 rating on IMDb and enjoys glowing reviews from its fan base — many of which point out how glaringly similar it is to 1999’s “Angel.”
“Geraint Wyn Davies played the tortured vampire hero who’s basically ‘Angel’, before Angel,” user Ellewis1195 wrote in their review of “Forever Knight.” Meanwhile, imdb-25288 took things a little further, calling “Forever Knight” the “pioneer of vampire shows.” “I honestly can’t understand why the production didn’t sue ‘Angel’ which copied EVERYTHING from this show,” they wrote.”
While a number of users on Reddit and IMDb still debate some key differences between the leads of each show — one’s an official police detective, for example, while the other is an unlicensed private investigator — there’s no denying the similarities between their premises, each of which involves a vampire atoning for their past sins in a brooding urban setting. And if you want to weigh in on this debate yourself, you can stream episodes of “Forever Knight” on Tubi and the Roku Channel.