The Greatest TV Pilots Of All Time

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Buffy the Vampire Slayer first came into the world as a failed cult movie, but Joss Whedon’s television pilot was something else entirely. The campy, witty first episode quickly establishes the bubbly high school student’s secret: she has a calling to fight vampires. Though the production value was lacking, and the actors were young, an immediate chemistry and great writing made this one of the best TV pilots.

When talking about the creation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, creator Joss Whedon told SF Said that he was trying to use metaphor as a way to relate to viewers. When asked if he wanted to do a show, Whedon thought of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “I thought, ‘High school as a horror movie.’ And it really was. And so the metaphor that I had begun to strike at in Alien: Resurrection became the central concept behind Buffy, and that’s how I sold it, and that’s what they bought, and they got it, and they let me do it – and after that, everything was about it.”