Moonlight is an American paranormal romance television series which premiered on September 28, 2007, and concluded on May 16, 2008. The series aired all sixteen episodes on CBS, an American terrestrial television network.Moonlight follows private investigator Mick St. John (Alex O'Loughlin). St. John's backstory involves his ex-wife Coraline (Shannyn Sossamon) who turned him into a vampire on the couple's wedding night fifty-five years prior. In the present day, he struggles with his love for a mortal woman, Beth Turner (Sophia Myles), his friendship with Josef Kostan (Jason Dohring), and his dealings with other vampires in Los Angeles, California.
Moonlight was created by Ron Koslow and Trevor Munson, and ranked eighty-ninth out of 281 in the 2007–08 ratings, with an average of 7.57 million American viewers. Due to the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, only twelve episodes of the original thirteen-episode order were produced. Once the strike ended, CBS announced that the series would return April 25, 2008 with four new episodes, to be part of the series' first season. On December 4, 2007, Les Moonves, President of CBS, stated that Moonlight was likely to return for a second season, although on May 13, 2008, CBS announced that Moonlight was officially canceled. Following the CBS cancellation, Warner Bros., producers of the series in association with Silver Pictures Television, inquired with other outlets about their interest in the series; however, the efforts failed, and the series was permanently canceled.Warner Home Video released the complete first season on DVD on January 20, 2009.