Midnight, Texas” is a Small Town somewhere outside of Dallas to where a psychic named Manfred Bernardo flees after the big city becomes too hot for him. It is also a new show airing on NBC based on a novel series by Charlaine Harris, the author of the “True Blood” series that was the basis of a long running show on HBO. The town, like Bon Temps. Louisiana has some peculiar inhabitants who seem to attract trouble, mainly because it is located on, what fans of the show “Buffy: The Vampire Slayer” will recognize as a hell mouth.

The witch, the vampire, the guardian angel and the hit woman

Some of the characters are more archetypes than fully rounded individuals. The witch is powerful enough, at one point, to lift a police car with her mind. The vampire is good to have around when someone disagreeable shows up, but only at night. The guardian angel sprouts wings, but only when he needs to fly. The hit woman is beautiful, especially when she is perforating someone with a hunting bow while in her underwear. Manfred is a good looking, scruffy sort who has to deal with ghosts showing up at all hours, almost always looking kind of gross, usually in a disagreeable mood. The exception is his dead grandma, upon whose advice he moved to the town out in the sticks.

Is 'Midnight, Texas' worth spending some time on?

The reason that “True Blood” became so popular was that it set up an alternate reality, in which vampires had “come out of the coffin” and were now an oppressed minority in America, stand ins for LGBT people in many ways. The show played with vampire stereotypes as while some of them were glamorous, others were kind of ugly, more handicapped by their particular condition than enhanced.

Midnight, Texas” is a different kind of place, apparently located somewhere between the real world and the pit of Hell. Besides the occult phenomenon, the townsfolk are menaced by more mundane threats, such as a murderer who did away with someone in a ritualistic fashion. Then there is the biker gang that calls itself “Sons of Lucifer.” A burly, disagreeable biker has no chance against an annoyed "fang banger" as they would call him in Bon Temps.

The pilot episode kind of fell flat, like a small town where one might stop on a car trip to eat at the local diner and rest for an hour or so, before driving on, forgotten as soon as it is in the rear view mirror. However, there is enough there to warrant at least a second look to find out if things get more interesting – or not.