John Constantine’s business card describes him as “exorcist, demonologist, and master of the dark arts” although he’s thinking about changing the last one to “dabbler rather than master”. That pretty much sums up NBC’s new supernatural drama Constantine. It’s loosely based on the movie Constantine starring Keanu Reeves and the DC comic Hellblazer. Constantine is played by British actor Matt Ryan you probably not seen before. The characters are basic pentagram drawing, salt sprinkling, holy water splashing, Latin spouting demon hunter. His sidekick Chas is a cab driver who apparently can come back from the dead. We don’t know the full back story on that one yet. Chas is played by Charles Halford who has recently appeared in my roles in Agents of SHIELD and True Detective.

In the opening episode, Constantine has checked himself into a mental hospital so he can get electroshock therapy to try to convince himself that demons don’t exist. But when a demon leaves him a message that the daughter of a former friend of his is being targeted, he checks out to go rescue the princess so to speak.

There is nothing that sets this above any other demon hunting character or show you’ve ever seen. At least not after watching one episode. I suppose if you are an undying (no pun intended) fan of the genre you want to check this out. So far I would rank it slightly better than SyFy Channel’s Dominion but not as good as CW network’s Supernatural which is currently in its 10th season. Supernatural has great humor, drama, and characters that over 10 seasons you really come to appreciate not to mention the awesome 70s rock soundtrack. So if you want to demons, go with Sam and Dean Winchester on Supernatural and only check this out if you can’t get enough demon hunting.

The show will probably find an audience because it airs right after Grimm and I will watch a few more episodes to see if it comes up with anything interesting but for now I’m giving it a weak “could be watchable” rating.