Spun-Off ‘Angel’ Could Be Just as Much Fun as ‘Buffy’

What do you get when crossing a hit show’s pretty vampire slayer with its hunky vampire who has the hots for her? A bouncing baby spinoff.

Talk about chug-a-lugging to excess. “When was the last time you drank blood?” someone asks Angel, the recovering bloodaholic from the popular “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” who now has his own series on the WB that promises to be nearly as much fun as its parent.

Which remains huge fun. Witness tonight’s season opener for “Buffy,” which finds our vampire-butt-kicking teen heroine (Sarah Michelle Gellar) becoming a college freshman en route to extending her anti-dark-side duties to the paper chase of academe.

Not that studying is something Sunnydale’s book-challenged, prioritizing Buffy takes to naturally. “I just can’t let it take the edge off my slaying,” she says.

Fat chance, for it turns out that blood-guzzling creatures of the evening have a yen for higher education, too, and UC Sunnydale is teeming with them. The Big Vampire on Campus and reigning snarly bitch of the darkness crowd is a formidable upperclasswoman who aches to snuff Buffy tonight if for no other reason that she can’t tolerate her dorky wardrobe.

“Freshmen!” she sniffs.

So goes the lead-in for the premiere of “Angel.”

We learn from the opening minutes that Angel (David Boreanaz) has fled Sunnydale for vampire-heavy Los Angeles. Still carrying a torch for Buffy, he is ever the lonely, brooding, gloomy vampire struggling to keep his vile side in check while responding to the sight of blood as an alcoholic would a whiff of booze. Shouldn’t there be a 12-step program for vampires?

“Angel” isn’t quite the stuff of “Buffy,” mostly because it’s such a hoot seeing vampiredom ravaged by a tiny wisp of a slayer, in contrast to bigger, bulkier Angel, who is cut more along the classic lines of a troubled superhero as he strives to protect humans from lethal bites.

That’s a minor quibble, though, for “Angel” is every bit the rewarding hybrid of gravity and levity, the latter flowing largely from another “Buffy” alumnus, the tenaciously perky Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter), now an aspiring actress in L.A.

Carried over, also, are puns and throwaway lines delivered with stone faces, as in Angel bumping into a surprised Cordelia at a Hollywood party for hobnobbers.

Her: “You’re not here to bite people?”

Him: “No, I just gave a friend a ride.”

By episode’s end, Angel will come to the aid of an actress threatened by an oily mogul who is attracted to the delicate curve of her . . . neck. And Angel, Cordelia and a benign half-demon named Doyle (Glenn Quinn) will merge on behalf of battling vampires and biting competing shows.

* “Angel” airs tonight at 9 on the WB. The network has rated it TV-14-LSV (may be unsuitable for children younger than 14, with special advisories for coarse language, sex and violence).