The best way to enjoy “The Dresden Files”—which is based on the fantasy books of Jim Butcher—is as a 14-year-old boy, with low expectations. There are a good number of monsters, though they tend to be too straightforward: like the “skinwalkers” who, um, walk in other people’s skin. There are plots that start out interestingly enough, but ultimately fizzle since the show takes place in a world where magic, sorcery and the like can resolve any situation whenever the writers need a quick fix. There is a “High Council” of wizard overseers for no apparent reason, and there’s a brooding hero with a sad childhood and a superpower bracelet that shields him from death. But, despite his upbringing and talisman, he’s still unable to make the camera like him.

If you are a wizard and your first name is Harry, it’s best to have been born in England, where at least you stand the chance of getting into a good school (like Hogwarts) and going on to do fine acts of heraldry. Harry Dresden had the bad luck of growing up in Atlantic City and ultimately becoming a lowly private detective in Chicago. He has the only ad in the Yellow Pages under “Wizards” yet business is pretty slow. British actor Paul Blackthorne, best known in the United States as the terrorist Stephen Saunders on “24,” stumbles his way through the role. He’s a poor man’s Harrison Ford: Handsome at some angles, goofy looking at others with an unfortunate receding hairline; a ladies’ man, though the ladies tend to be possessed by spirits, downtrodden or just plain mean.

The most satisfying facet of the series is that it re-introduces the long lost plot device of the manservant (Batman’s butler Alfred being the prototype). The manservant’s role is to aid a heroic, younger boss by using of intellectual prowess but never leaving home and remaining mostly invisible to outsiders. Harry’s helper is the spirit of an ancient alchemist named Bob. In the Butcher books, Bob is a talking skull. Here, he is fully limbed and played by, of all people, Broadway star Terrence Mann (the original Rum Tum Tugger in Cats). It’s good camp casting in a show that’s nowhere campy enough for its own good.