It takes all types, and so, with just a lettle hesitatation and a wondering twirl of my garlic necklace, I grew used to the idea that featherlight Buffy and vampire beefcake Angel could be a match.
Even accepted their story of the gypsy curse. You know, the one put upon Angel for his brutality a century or so a ago. Poor old vampire, he was given a soul and a conscience and sent out to wander among those creatures of the night that don't have the same.
Worse than that was the curse's stipulation that if he experiances "perfect happiness", which seems to translate as sex with his true love, it will really bring out the beast in him. After a truly memorable night with Buffy, that's meant celibacy and many moody glances.
Now, in a burst of inspiration, Joss Whedon, the creater, leading writer and executive producer of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, has sent his kick-boxing heroine off to uni and The Incredible Sulk into his own spin-off series.
As Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) struggles to sort the undead from her psych-and-media studies at college this week, Angel (David Boreanaz) is battling to find his way among the bloodsuckers and vamps of a darly Chandleresque Los Angeles.
The last time we saw Angel, you may recall, was at Buffy's high school graduation, leading a band of vampire-thumpers against Sunnydale's diabolical mayor and council of aesthetically challenged night stalkers. Looking pretty pleased with himself.
This time, he's in a bar, maudlin drunk (on bloody marys?) and burbling on about his lost love. There's a couple of jars of pig's blood in the fridge of his dark basement home, some damsels in distress, and a city of star-struck, script-clutching demons waiting to take him out. Welcome to LA.
Just when his life starts looking really aneamic, Angel receives a visit from a half-Irish, half-weirdo character called Doyle (Glenn Quinn). This new friend brings a message from "the powers that be" that reveals he can atone for past sins by reaching out to people to show them there is love and hope still left in the world.
This all sounds so unbelievably Californian that even stolid Angel is suspicious. Urged to chat up a troubled waitress, he asks Doyle: "Why would a woman I've never met before talk to me?" Doyle looks startled.
"Looked in the mirror lately?" he asks, before realising the mortal faux pas. "No, I guess you wouldn't."
And so Angel takes on the dark Superman role, infiltrating a party of A-list vampires who are apparently running Los Angeles, and meeting another Sunnydale graduate, haughtly Cordelia Chase, on the way.
In the first of this year's Buffy The Vampire Slayer episodes, Willow and Oz are settling in at college, but will Buffy be happy studying images of pop culture sharing her dormitory with a Celine Dion fan who snores, and generally being treated like Miss Cupcake Illinois?
It doesn't take long for a punked-out vampiress called Sunday and her teenage vampire gang to scent fear on the campus. Buffy needs help. When she turns to her old guide Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) she discovers him enjoying his enforced retirement with a beautiful woman. When she turns to Xander and her other Sunnydale friends, she doesn't seem to have that old enthusiasm. When she turns on the vampires, they tell her she fights like a girl.
What's missing her? A guardian Angel, of course. So just how long will it be before Joss Whedon lets the pair cross over to bring the sparkle back in their eyes, beef up the action and restore what was once the hottest romance on TV?