'Angel' still soars

HOLLYWOOD — The scariest thing about "Angel" as it enters its fifth season was the news that the WB demanded — and creator/executive producer Joss Whedon agreed to — some big changes in the show.

This amounted to fixing something that, creatively, wasn't broken. But what the WB wanted was a show that was more accessible. A show that someone who had never seen it before could tune in and actually figure out what's happening. And, at the same time, a show that is less dark.

It seemed an impossible task — taking a show with a devoted (if not overly large) following and keeping that group on board while, at the same time, opening it up to new viewers.

But Whedon and his team have done it. Tonight's season premiere (8 p.m., Ch. 30), written and directed by Whedon, and next week's second episode are great — action-packed, exciting, extremely funny and fully accessible to anyone who pays attention for a minute.

Angel (David Boreanaz) and his team are in a new venue. They've taken over an evil law firm, Wolfram & Hart, but they're still trying to help the helpless. That and the fact that Angel is a vampire with a soul who remains determined to make up for all of his sins is all you need to know — a big change from last season, which Whedon admitted "was basically a 22-hour episode."

The "new" format for "Angel" is actually the original format. "We started out the show saying, 'We'll do stand-alones.' I don't want to say we failed so much as decided that wasn't what we were really interested in," Whedon said. " But now that we have an almost unwieldy cast . . . we can do stand-alone episodes that have character resonance in them."

And there will "absolutely" be overarching themes to the season. "There's relationships. There's the question of what the hell they're doing at Wolfram & Hart. What Wolfram & Hart is doing to them," Whedon said. "There's going to be a seasonal arc the way there has always been. The difference is that every episode should be self-contained enough for anybody to walk in and watch it who's never seen it before. And last year, as much as I like to say it was, it wasn't. A 30-second 'previously on' did not catch you up. So it's almost like making a new pilot every week."

There are a few cast changes. As has been widely publicized, Spike (James Marsters) — another vampire with a soul who died in the "Buffy" finale — joins "Angel" tonight. He actually appears only in the final scene, but the second episode revolves around his sudden reappearance.