Lady and the vamp

Buffy's back, along with Angel spinoff

Everybody knew the romance between soulful 244-year-old vampire Angel and demon-slaying teenager Buffy couldn't last. And not just because they had to overcome roughly the same age gap as Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Cursed by gypsies who restored his human conscience more than 100 years ago, Angel (David Boreanaz) has a serious problem with intimacy. If he and Buffy The Vampire Slayer (Sarah Michelle Gellar) get too physical, he'll lose his soul and revert to his formerly wicked ways as an evil, bloodsucking creature of the night.

But Boreanaz, whose campy new spinoff series Angel premieres on WGN Ch. 68 at 9 p.m. tonight (and on Space Ch. 39 at 9 p.m. Thursday), says that old gypsy curse shouldn't prevent his brooding vamp from having the occasional fling after he leaves Sunnydale, Calif., and sets up shop in the City of Angels.

"I think I have to really be in love with the other person. True happiness is true love, so I think if I just had sex with a person I wasn't in love with, I think I'd still be all right. My soul wouldn't be lifted," Boreanaz says.

That's lucky, since series creator Joss Whedon says he plans to give Angel and Buffy potential new love interests this fall, without taking Angel off his primary diet of hospital blood plasma.

"He's a good vampire, he's a good guy," Whedon says. "He doesn't bite people any more. But that fact that he's a vampire informs the show enormously thematically, because it's about that isolation. He's trying to redeem himself, he's trying to reclaim his humanity."

To that end, Angel takes up a new mission in immortal life, saving troubled souls with help from two unlikely partners: Buffy's caustic teen queen Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter), who's now a struggling actress in L.A., and spunky sidekick Doyle (Glenn Quinn), whose supernatural visions steer him to people who need to be touched by Angel.

Quinn, who played Becky's husband on Roseanne, reverts to his natural Irish accent to play Doyle, whom he describes as "a gambler, hustler, Irish half-demon, half-human," with a comedic bent.

Angel will be more of an adult show than Buffy, which opens its new season on WGN Ch. 68 at 8 p.m. (and on CKY Ch. 5 Saturday at midnight). But having slain the metaphorical demons of high school, Buffy is also entering a new stage of life, although Gellar says she had some trepidation about continuing her series without Boreanaz.

"David and I had a very, very special relationship. In three years of working together we never had so much as a disagreement, and I mean, that's just unbelievable considering the hours we spent together," she says.

"And we worked so well together. We could gauge each other's moods. We could help each other. So, for me, it's very daunting. You have this concern that, you know, part of the reason Buffy worked was Angel and you (think), 'What if I can't do it on my own? What if I need David?' "

Of course, Buffy has proved time and again that she can handle any crisis on her own. And Gellar, 22, says she was thrilled last season when Buffy was given a Class Protector award at the school prom for her extracurricular work plunging stakes into vampire hearts, outwitting hounds of hell and kicking demon butt.

"No one has ever acknowledged in three and a half years that the mortality rate of the school has gone down," she says. "I think she's an incredible role model. I wished growing up that there were characters like that that I could watch. A female that's not the prettiest, not the most popular and can take care of herself. And I think it's so important that girls see that."

Some of the show's most rabid fans are adults, but Gellar says she hopes the kids will still relate when Buffy goes to college this year.

"She's going to leave her boyfriend, she's going to leave her mentor Giles and she's going to learn to experience things on her own.

"So, hopefully, that will be something that a lot of young girls and boys can relate to as well. And I think that's what the new season is going to be about, is that next step in growing up."