March 2008, and in a near-derelict space just south of the Thames, the undead of London are about to meet their match in ITV's new Saturday teatime serial, The Last Van Helsing.

The warehouse where filming is taking place has been converted into the practical, spacious apartment of the modern heir to the vampire-slaying dynasty, and into the graffiti-strewn tunnels where our hero, played by Philip Glenister, is facing down the creatures of the night.

The show, now retitled Demons, is ITV's latest shot at competing with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doctor Who, and Glenister, following his star turn as Gene Hunt in Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes, is plainly the show's big draw.

In Demons, he sports a nattier wardrobe and a slightly creepy American accent, but is still hefting a big gun and tossing insults at villains. Today, this feels like the coldest place on earth, and cast and crew are visibly envious of the warm suits of the actors playing the monsters.

Fast-forward nine months, and the first episode is finished. Entitled They Bite, it is written by Peter Tabern, the series creator, who takes no risks by mashing up the pilot of Buffy with the not dissimilar introductory show of the revived Doctor Who. A teenager, Luke Rutherford (Christian Cooke), is studying for exams and going to parties, when his life is invaded by supernatural troublemakers - a CGI rat-human, hoodie werewolves and Mackenzie Crook as a vampire with a silly name (Gladiolus Thrip).

Enter man-of-mystery Rupert E. Galvin (Glenister), with a purred American accent, telling Luke to run, just as often as Christopher Eccleston's Doctor told Billie Piper's Rose to. Where Buffy paired an English mentor with an American girl, Demons teams an American mentor with an English boy, as Galvin initiates Luke into a family tradition of vampire-slaying, nagging him to grow up fast so that he can carry the series and fulfil his destiny.

Among the many things Luke learns is that his real surname is Van Helsing and that he's descended from the Victorian vampire-slayer Abraham Van Helsing, introduced by Bram Stoker in 1897 as the nemesis of Count Dracula.

The Demons preview disc lacks end credits, but I trust that - unlike the ungracious Stephen Sommers, who called a film Van Helsing without naming Stoker anywhere - ITV will credit the vampire slayer's creator in the way that the BBC lists Terry Nation as the creator of the Daleks. Demons also borrows Stoker's heroine, Mina Harker, who - as in the film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - has lived on as a vampire and is here a blind piano virtuoso, played by rising star Zoe Tapper, seen recently in BBC One's Survivors.

Over the decades (see sidebar) various actors have set their stamp on the role of Van Helsing. When the actor-manager-author Hamilton Deane adapted Stoker's novel as a West End play in the 1920s, he intended to take the showy role of the vampire himself, but realising Dracula was very rarely on stage in human form, cast himself as Van Helsing instead. The vampire-killer comes on after the plot is in motion and dominates with reams of explanatory vampire lore and multiple eccentricities (including what Stoker calls a “King Laugh”) as the villain.

Stoker burdened his savant with a peculiar accent, but built him up as a Holmesian know-all to counter Dracula's Moriarty-ish evil. Some actors - notably Anthony Hopkins, but also Olivier and David Suchet - have played Van Helsing as a funny-voiced loon, letting whoever plays Dracula run away with the show.

This is why Peter Cushing, who trimmed away the vocal mannerisms and showed a clear-eyed determination to rid Transylvania of vampirism, remains the screen's most satisfying Van Helsing. His no-nonsense, physical style perfectly complements Christopher Lee's imposing, cloak-swishing dynamism.

Stoker wrote Van Helsing as a consulting physician, but Cushing made him an action hero. In the 1974 Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, Cushing's Van Helsing teamed up with kung fu vampire-fighters, setting a precedent for Marvel Comics' Blade (played by Wesley Snipes with wooden knives), Buffy and Hugh Jackman's rootless Van Helsing.

Demons gives Glenister the mature position, while Cooke's character is his Jonathan Harker-like apprentice. But when Galvin gets up after a fall and mutters that he's “getting too old for this”, the show seems to be setting up a changing of the guard so that the new Van Helsing can take over the family firm.

I loitered on set as Cooke was menaced by the not-as-destroyed-asadvertised Crook (whose prosthetic nose is the highlight of the show) and Glenister played with a toy raygun thingie that he admitted wasn't as satisfying as Gene Hunt's shooter.

So will Cooke's Luke become strong enough to carry the show? Well, he's posh, pretty and can do a bewildered double-take when a monster jumps at him, but he's not the first man you'd turn to when you need someone to stand up against the forces of evil.

Demons is a show I'd really like to like, but it needs to free itself from the templates it's adopted to develop its own personality. The elements that intrigue all come from Stoker's still-influential novel, while the encrustations derive from more recent glosses on the great Van Helsing tradition.

Demons, Sat, ITV1, 7.20pm

SCREEN VAN HELSINGS

Edward Van Sloan (Dracula, 1931)

Van Sloan sternly pulled a crucifix on Bela Lugosi, and reappeared - renamed Von Helsing - in Dracula's Daughter, where he is threatened with prosecution for driving a stake through the Count.

Peter Cushing (Dracula, 1958)

Cushing's determined, resourceful and rather Holmesian Van Helsing (right) bested Christopher Lee in a swashbuckling battle, and also managed to appear in a Dracula-free sequel, Brides of Dracula. Later, in Dracula AD1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula, Cushing played a lookalike modern descendant - establishing the notion of a vampire-killing dynasty exploited in Demons.

Frank Finlay (Count Dracula, 1977)

Tracking Louis Jourdan's Dracula in a BBC-TV production, Finlay gives the closest reading of the role to Stoker's text - as a doddering little old Dutchman with reserves of spiritual strength and arcane knowledge.

Laurence Olivier (Dracula, 1979)

Olivier battled Frank Langella's Dracula with one of his patent accents. In line with the prevailing cynicism of the Seventies, he gets stuck with his own stake.

Anthony Hopkins (Bram Stoker's Dracula, 1992)

In Coppola's hash of things, Hopkins plays Van Helsing as a scar-faced maniac, ranting at his associates and carrying severed vampire heads by their hair. People made fun of Keanu Reeves's English accent but Hopkins's Dutch - and Gary Oldman's Romanian - are equally strangled.

Hugh Jackman (Van Helsing, 2004)

An in-name-only Van Helsing (below) who wouldn't last two minutes with Cushing. A franchise was mooted but no sequels yet.

Also-rans: Christopher Plummer (Dracula 2000, 2000), Herbert Lom (Count Dracula, 1971), Peter Fonda (Nadja, 1994), David Carradine (The Last Sect, 2006), Jack Gwillim (The Monster Squad, 1987), Rod Steiger (Revenant, 1998), Reggie Nalder (Dracula Sucks, 1979), Richard Benjamin (Love at First Bite, 1979), David Suchet (Dracula, 2006), Nigel Davenport (Dracula, 1973).

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