It's been a long time coming, but Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles finally kicks off in America this weekend.

Set between Terminator 2 and Terminator 3, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is the long-promised show that brings the Terminator story to a television audience, only without Arnold Schwarzenegger, the gigantic budget or the rubbishy Guns 'N Roses soundtrack.

And, slightly miraculously, people don't think seem to think that Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is crap.

It's not a good time to be a robotic lady, you know. Look at The Bionic Woman – cancelled after less than one season because nobody wanted to watch that depressing EastEnders girl running quite fast and nothing else for any longer than they needed to.

So on that basis, things didn't look so hot for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Announced over two years ago, the Terminator TV show has been one of the most hotly-anticipated shows in recent years even though, strapped of the multimillion dollar budgets of the movie franchise, there was a big chance that the Terminators would all just be blokes wearing metal dustbins and, instead of killing them by throwing them between the blades of an airborne helicopter and then blowing them up with 500-ft explosions, they'd all just happen to suffer from particularly severe peanut allergies.

In fact, judging by the trailers, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles looks like a cross between Smallville and the last season of 24…

The early reviews for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles are in and, even though the show plainly features an indestructible robot warrior from the future who looks a lot like a prissy teenage girl, they actually seem pretty good. Reuters especially seemed to like it, calling the show a 'triumph' and adding:

Director David Nutter gets the series off to a rousing start, practically packing every frame with suspense, special effects and an urgency that drives this show like an incessant drumbeat. Can subsequent episodes measure up to this glitzy and heart-pounding pilot? A second episode sent to critics pretty much assures they can.

Exciting. Hopefully it won't be too long before Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles makes its way over to these shores, because we can't wait to see how it ends.

Oh wait, we saw Terminator 3 at the cinema so we know that the robots don't ever kill John Connor. Oh well, in that case never mind.

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Terminator TV Spinoff A Triumph – Reuters