The Forgotten Supernatural Series You Can Stream On Amazon
Not all television spin-offs are created equal. For every Frasier, there's a Joey. Luckily, Angel, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spin-off that ran for five seasons, falls into the former camp. The neo-noir drama, which premiered on The WB in 1999, finds David Boreanaz reprising his role as Buffy's much older ex-boyfriend Angel — a vampire cursed with a soul and thus a guilty conscience — after he leaves Sunnydale and moves to Los Angeles in search of redemption.
Darker in tone and more adult than its high school-set parent series but no less relevant in its storytelling, Angel follows its eponymous hero as he opens a private detective agency to "help the helpless." He's initially aided in his investigations by another beloved Buffy alum, the sharp-tongued Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter), who moved to L.A. after high school in order to become an actress. After running into Angel, she joins his small team, which also includes the half-human, half-demon Doyle (Glenn Quinn), who receives prophetic visions of people in peril from the mysterious forces of good known only as The Powers That Be. If you've yet to experience the excitement and suspense of this excellent drama that blends the supernatural with horror and subtle comedy, you're in luck, because you can stream Angel in its entirety on Amazon Prime.
Angel is one of the few spin-offs that is as good as its parent series
Angel was obviously familiar to Buffy fans, but it was successful because it was also easily accessible to new viewers. And while some fans will tell you that the first season — which employs a standard monster-of-the-week format — is rather lackluster in comparison to the rest of the series, it is also a very solid format to launch a new series. So while Angel broods and struggles with his own vampiric nature and the knowledge of what he did as the dangerous vampire Angelus, he atones for his sins by saving innocents and taking down different monsters or vampires. Beginning in season 2, the show begins to utilize a more serialized storytelling format, which allows it to expand its universe and dig deeper into its supporting cast, which grows after Quinn leaves the show midway through the first season.
The first new addition to Team Angel is Buffy alum Alexis Denisof, who reprises his role of Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. No longer a buttoned-up Watcher, he introduces himself as a self-proclaimed "rogue demon hunter" and becomes an integral part of the show. Additional supporting characters that become like family include J. August Richards' monster-hunting streetfighter Charles Gunn; Amy Acker's brilliant and gifted Fred Burkle, who is trapped in an alternate demon dimension before joining Angel's team; and Andy Hallet's aura-reading demon Lorne. With a solid foundation involving the universally familiar battle of good versus evil and a strong cast with unique talents and skills, Angel managed to run for five seasons, culminating in what some critics have described as one of the best series finales of all time (via IndieWire).