Fighting the forces of evil and killing monsters are all in a day's work for Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

The pint-sized star has reached iconic status on TV in the United States and Britain but there has yet to be a home-grown supernatural action hero to rival her.

Aspiring writer and director Chaz Harris, 18, hopes to change all that with his show Cursed And Blessed, where a boy and a girl battle the forces of evil.

Chaz, of Oathall Avenue, Haywards Heath, said: "It is about two teenagers, Christian and Bethany, who were cursed by a witch in the late 1700s.

"Their families were in conflict with the local village witch because one of the members was a witch hunter.

"They are cursed to live for eternity with each other."

The action jumps to the present day when the two lovers, now more than 200 years old, are living with William, a druid, who gives them powers over Earth, wind, fire and water.

At the start of the show they save a girl called Justine who becomes part of their fighting group.

Chaz promised there would be lots of fighting of supernatural forces with plenty of action scenes to appeal to even the most hardened Buffy fan.

He is filming a pilot show in Haywards Heath and hopes he will be commissioned to make a full series.

He said: "The style of the whole thing is a UK version of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

"I had the idea a while ago. Then at Christmas I bought all the Buffy box sets.

"We don't have anything like this in our country and I thought there should be.

"I went back through my old ideas and found this one and expanded it."

The crew is filming all week and Chaz, co-producing the show with Sarah Brady, from Worthing, was looking forward to the flashback scenes they are shooting at Weald and Downland Open Air Museum near Chichester, in some of the 18th Century buildings.

He first decided he wanted to be a director when he was just eight - and has set up his own company called Genre Vision.

He said: "I have wanted to do this for about ten years. I want to do mainly directing. That is my aspiration and it was after watching Jurassic Park I first said to my parents I wanted to be a director.

"After studying drama at school I realised I didn't like acting and preferred to be behind the scenes. I have written a couple of my own feature film scripts but I got fed up of sending things to agents and not having any success."