Maddy Smith (Aimee Kelly) is a schoolgirl with a secret. Several secrets, actually.

On the plus side, there’s ultrasonic hearing, night vision, super smelling power and the kind of speed that would put Usain Bolt to shame. Unfortunately, there’s also a tendency to get hairy, teethy and quadrupedal under stress, or whenever the moon is full. But this isn’t your common-or-garden variety lycanthropy.

‘It’s wolfblood, not werewolf,’ Maddy (who has yet to experience her first transformation into wolf form) explains. ‘We’re not monsters.’ This may be true, but she still has to keep her powers hidden from her friends – and her parents locked in the cellar during certain lunar phases, so they don’t scoff live chickens or their daughter’s shoes, or do something even worse.

Things are tricky, but she’s doing a decent job of balancing the ordinary and extraordinary; her BFFs Shannon (Louise Connolly-Burnham) and Tom (Keder Williams-Sterling) have no idea that their pal is a wolfblood. Nor does anyone else at the school in Stoneybridge, the Northumbrian town in which they live – until Rhydian (Bobby Lockwood) turns up.

‘You smell like my parents!’ Maddy blurts out when the new boy is being introduced to his classmates (amid a hail of jokes about being Welsh – leeks, sheep noises – even though he isn’t). Rhydian, of course, is also a wolfblood. Only as he’s lived in foster care since he was two, he has little knowledge of his Canis lupis heritage. All he knows is that when he gets angry or upset, bad things happens and he turns into a wolf. Together, he and Maddy must learn to control their developing powers and keep them under wraps, whilst simultaneously going through all the usual joy and heartbreak of teenage life.

Although it can’t quite decide whether it’s a sanitised version of The Fades with the sex and swearing cut out – as it’s a CBBC drama, the puberty/virginity metaphor of the change from human to wolf is understated, while the thorny dilemma of what happens to a wolfblood’s clothes during transformation isn’t addressed; the garments merely reappear intact when their wearer changes back with no questions asked – or if it’s simply Twilight-meets-Byker Grove – there’s more than a touch of the Robsten about Maddy and Rhydian, particularly when they’re running around the woods – Wolfblood is a lot of fun.

It’s witty and well-filmed, with a smack of realism despite the fantasy elements and the occasional lapse into cliché from the pantomime school bitches, Kay, Kara and Katrina (‘This is Northumbria, not Gossip Girl,’ Maddy says as they sneer their way across the campus).

The first episode is mostly given over to introducing the main characters, their lives and – in the wolfbloods’ case – their powers without adding any additional storylines, but there’s another twelve instalments to come for that.

Aimee Kelly is as immediately impressive as Maddy as she was as Kayla in Sket, Bobby Lockwood is far better than his first canine role might lead you to believe (the voice of Patch in 101 Dalmations 2), and the special effects – created by the same company that worked on X-Men: First Class – have a lot in common with the depiction of Professor Lupin’s werewolf form in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: not realistic, exactly, but oddly convincing. The same could easily be said of the show as a whole.

Airs at 5.15pm on Monday 10th September 2012 on CBBC.

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