Firefly Review Part 1 - Believe the hype?

I've broken my Firefly review up into daily bite-sized chunks, because if you're like me you always intend to read stuff longer than one paragraph, but never do....

Lets begin.

The hype for Firefly preceeds it. That's a difficult situation for a TV series, especially one that has been cancelled. Plus the recent series of Battlestar Galactica seemed, to me anyway, to set a new standard in 21st century TV SF. And it was a Joss Wheedon show, had he exhausted all of his powers on Buffy and Angel? I was a little bit sceptical.

The first episode "Serenity", which was the original pilot, threw me a bit. It was not what I expected at all. I'd heard it described as western but thought that probably meant the style or themes or whatever. But no it's real cowboy-western-SF. And after the pilot I was left with a somewhat confused, but intrigued, frown.