The Vampire Diaries, season 1

Elena Gilbert starts senior year four months after the car accident that killed her parents, holding herself together for her brother Jeremy's sake. The new boy, Stefan Salvatore, is courteous, watchful, and turns out to be a vampire who has been seventeen since the Civil War. His brother Damon arrives shortly after - charming, cruel, and feeding - and the difference between the two of them organises the whole first year.

The town has history with this. Mystic Falls' founding families once burned a church full of vampires, and their descendants - including the parents of half the cast - still keep watch with rings and devices. What nobody says aloud: Elena is the double of Katherine Pierce, the vampire both brothers loved in 1864, whose game with them made them what they are.

The season's engine is the tomb under the old church - Damon believes Katherine is sealed in it and spends months engineering its opening. She is not inside. What gets out instead, and what the founders do about it, costs the town its mayor and Elena an uncle who turns out to be a father.

It ends with a device, a fire, and a kiss on a porch that Elena did not give - because the woman wearing her face just came back to town.