Amazon.co.uk Review

The sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the one a lot of people hated--the show's writers followed the logic of plot and character development into some gloomy places, especially in this, the season's second half. The way that Willow's interest in magic had grown into an excessive fascination with her own power was plausible enough, but to move the interest of this over to a crudely explicit analogy with addiction and rehab was a point where the show seemed to be underlining its usual deft, angst-ridden metaphors. The complicated relationship between Buffy and the bleached blond vampire Spike was far more successfully handled. Sarah Michelle Gellar offers sexual self-disgust as well as any other emotion she has had to perform and James Marsters is as elegantly ruthless and obsessive as ever.

This is a season in which chickens come home to roost: everything from the villainy of the three geeks to Xander's doubts about marriage come to a head, often--as in the case of the impressive wedding episode--through wildly dark humour. The estrangement of the characters from each other--a well-observed portrait of what happens to college pals in their early 20s--comes to a shocking head with the death of a major character and that death's apocalyptic consequences. The season ends on a consoling note which it has, by that point and in spite of imperfections, entirely earned. –Roz Kaveney