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LOL - Tim Dekay isn't Lucy Lawless. Therefore, by definition, we already know in advance that one one-hundredth of one percent of the viewership, which will in turn be less than one percent of the general population, will claim that his acting is wooden and that there is no chemisty between them. But that will be 75% or more of the online opinions offered.

Actually, the Originals have been doing even a little better - it's the bigscreen movies and reruns that have done lower in recent months. For actual premieres (which is usually 2 per month, plus sometimes a 3rd on Sunday) this is the breakdown this year so far:

Beyond Loch Ness (12/31/07 - 1/6/08) - 1.7 (Leo from Charmed vs. a plesiosaur)
Ghost Voyage (1/21/08 - 1/27/08) - 1.3 (Antonio Sabato vs. ghostly shipboard forces)

The Bone Eater (2/4/08 - 2/10/08) - 1.5 (Bruce Boxleitner vs. a skeletal Native American demon, Clara Bryant vs. the fabric in her t-shirt )
Living Hell (2/18/08 - 2/24/08) - 1.2 (scientists vs. an energy-sucking monster)

Ogre (3/3/08 - 3/9/08) - 1.6 (Bo Duke and backpacking students vs. a conjured creature in rural Pennsylvania)
Rock Monster (3/17/08 - 3/23/08) - 1.3 (backpacking students vs. a conjured creature in rural Bulgaria)

Odysseus - Voyage to the Underworld (4/7/08 - 4/13/08) - 1.2 (Arnold Vosloo and Rhade from Andromeda vs. Persephone's vampires)
Warbirds (4/14/08 - 4/20/08) - 1.5 (Leo from Charmed and the adorable Lucy Faust vs. pterodactyls)

Aztec Rex (5/5/08 - 5/11/08) - 1.2 (Ortiz from Seaquest, Steve from 90210, and Sierra from Dollhouse vs. T-Rex's)
Heatstroke (5/26/08 - 6/01/08) - 1.5 (Chance from Strange Luck and Winne from The Wonder Years vs. aliens)

And then these were the Sunday premieres this year so far, which weren't quite billed as "Originals," because RHI did them as part of a 10-pic package, and in some cases releases them elsewhere (like in Canada) first:

BloodMonkey (1/21/08 - 1/27/08) - 1.5 (F. Murray Abraham and the stunning Freishia Bomanbehram vs. killer apes)
The Hive (2/11/08 - 2/17/08) - 1.2 (Luke Duke vs. sentient ants)
Hybrid (3/10/08 - 3/16/08) - 1.3 (Mallory from Family Ties vs. human/animal experimentation)
Infected (4/21/08 - 4/27/08) - 1.1 (Judd Nelson and Isabella Rosselini vs. an alien invasion)

For those who are unfamiliar with genre movies (and might be tempted to compare Monster Ark to, oh, Sex and the City or Brokeback Mountain or something) there are a number of similar films in a marathon on Sci-Fi this coming Saturday 6/28.

9 AM - Reptilian - alien monster, in a Korean variation on Godzilla

11 AM - Manticore - Chakotay, Leeta the Dabo Girl, and the Blair Witch chick take on an "ancient Person weapon of mass destruction" in modern Iraq (which looks suspiciously like Bulgaria) - Jonas Talkington and Michael Cory Davis play Army rangers; one guess as to their fate! Same producers as Monster Ark.

1 PM - Cerberus - Greg Evigan and Emmanuelle Vaugier take on the 3-headed hound of hell in Romania; Michael Cory Davis plays a commando - one guess as to his fate!

3 PM - Gryphon - Tara from Buffy and Det. DeBreno from The District take on Lenny from LA Law and the titular winged beastie in medieval Romania .

5 PM - Grendel - Sheriff Bannerman from The Dead Zone defends Counselor Troi and Harold from Chariots of Fire from the mythological beastie and his mama, in a Denmark that looks suspiciously like Bulgaria . Same producers as Monster Ark.

7 PM - Supergator - from Roger Corman; title says it all. Featuring Brad Johnson, Kelly McGillis and Bianca Lawson (Kendra ze vampire slayer, but sans Mr. Pointy)

9 PM - world premiere of Copperhead - Brad Johnson takes on giant snakes in an Old West that looks remarkably like Bulgaria; from the same producers who will be bringing us Monster Ark in about 6 weeks!


11 PM - Sasquatch Mountain - a yeti shares forbidden love with a bigfoot, and now all they got is Sasquatch Mountain! Starring Meleager the Mighty and Lance Henriksen (because his SAG contract says he gets to be in all films with the word "sasquatch" in the title.)

1 AM - rerun of Copperhead

3 AM - Komodo vs. Cobra - title says it all, from the director of Bone Eater, A.I. Assault, Return of Swamp Thing, Sorority Massacre 2, and The Bare Wench Project.

Yep, sadly Marina Sirtis has just a glorified cameo in Grendel, but she and Ben Cross ham it up magnificently - it's like they're doing Shakespeare in the Park for the back row 50 yards away, while everyone else is doing this gritty Dark Ages war movie. Technically, she plays the same role as Lucy in the Ring trilogy - Hrothgar's bride, Wealthea. (Here she's his real wife, and not a poor amnesiac.) Details here.

Robert Beltran on the other hand is very definitely the star of Manticore, as a tough sergeant. He's put on some weight since Voyager, which would be OK if he were playing a heavy-set, 50-ish gruff sergeant (in the way that Bruce Campbell is now playing an older, graying but still rogue-ish version of himsef) but he plays this as if he were still 35. He still does fine though. Chase Masterson does a nice job as a cable news reporter who barges into a combat zone - she's not young anymore either, but it works with her, as an aging beauty in a competitive business where younger reporters get the promotions. Heather Donohue has really buffed up and is completely believable as a tough corporal. (This Iraq not only resembles Bulgaria, but has women in combat roles, and lets soldiers like Michael sport long dreads that go halfway down their backs, just as the Air Force allowed him to do in AA. )

Military buffs also griped that the weaponry (guns, tanks, etc.) was all about 15 years out of date. But somehow it gives me a good feeling that people in Bulgaria are not able to obtain state of the art US military equipment!

BTW, production designer Georgi Petrov Yakimov (who did props on Monster Ark) does a fairly believable job with a built-from-scratch, credible Western town smack dab in the middle of Bulgaria. Copperhead also featured the same 1st and 2nd assistant directors ("quiet on the set!") 2nd unit director ("OK, we need a close-up of his hand grabbing that shotgun...") and most of the same SFX artists and production assistants. Plus that man-of-many-ethnicities, George Zlatarev, credited as "Iraqi Capt. Backhar" in "Ark," who played a Mexican outlaw in this one. And in an unheard of plot twist, Jonas Talkington had a small part as a marshall, but did not get chomped by a giant snake! (Clearly they didn't read the fine print in his contract.)

I think you may actually enjoy this one, as a good 75% is a pretty realistic WW2 movie with the mis-matched team of commandos, local resistance fighters, etc. And being filmed in Bulgaria, there's plenty of authentic period architecture - or more accurately, mid-1800's buildings that would have been in use during the war - plus a nice big real-live castle that probably really was used by troops in more recent years.