
My cable television connection hasn’t seen HBO since Big Love left the air. January 18th it returns to the small screen (or the 56″ screen in my living room), but I’m not sure if I want to pay for HBO just to watch it. The internet is a wonderful thing, and I’m certain there will be episodes flying around.
Living without HBO has been fine. But I missed the beginning of a series called True Blood that was getting some pretty high praise in certain circles. My friend Troy recommended it for me, along with a couple other internet bloggers I regularly read. So I set my sights on finding the episodes. Thankfully I was able to get a hold of all twelve and watch them from start to finish.
If you know Six Feet Under or American Beauty, you know Alan Ball, writer of both. The magic in his writing is the believable reality of his characters against the surreality of their settings. Six Feet Under was entertaining because I enjoyed the characters AND wanted to see what was going to happen next in their world. It’s a kind of approachable television that looks familiar until it blindsides you with something completely unexpected. The opening death sequences of Six Feet Under are a perfect example.
True Blood is set in the regular everyday world. Except vampires, now able to survive on a synthetic form of blood, are coming out into society and mixing with the living. I know what you are thinking. Vampires? Vampires are real? Someone is making another show about Vampires? I won’t mention that horrible, craptastic, turd-laden show that rhymed with Fluffy The Tramp Fire Player because that pile of skin boil exudate deserves to be forgotten. Permanently.
Yes, the True Blood world includes vampires, locally in Bon Temps, Louisiana and around the world. Portrayed in some classical ways as highly sexual creatures, malicious in groups, and lonely in their own ways. At some points, the main plotline that flows through the first twelve episodes mirrors the classic “beauty and the beast” story. What differs in this universe of the undead is some unique twists on vampire creation, the magic that they posses, and the powerful narcotic that is vampire blood.
Charlaine Harris, author of the Sookie Stackhouse (Southern Vampire) Series books, originally created the world we’re seeing in the series. Ball has adapted it to bring True Blood to life. I haven’t yet read the books (they are next in line after I finish my tour of some books of my childhood) but I’m looking forward to digging more into her world in print. On the screen, it’s mesmerizing.
The usual vampire issues are dealt with in inventive ways. Questions of sunlight, silver, crosses, and garlic are brought up as we (the audience) watch the vampires come into contact with the living and engage in daily life. The fly-on-the-wall view of this seemingly normal world on the surface was what kept me watching.
Ball’s writing (and hopefully Harris’) truly shines as his vampires, the current scourge of the nation, deal publicly with issues akin to racism, homophobia, segregation, and that old standby, miscegenation. Mock CNN pro- and anti-vampire talking heads dot the episodes. You can almost feel the subtle movements for and against them as the characters develop and unfold. In case you didn’t know, Ball is out and proud of being gay. Maybe it’s just me, but I felt the strong ties between the gay community and the vampires. I liked that.

The character work is awesome in the series. Anna Paquin, the young quiet storm who won an Oscar at age 11, now age 26, plays Sookie Stackhouse completely. Sookie is blessed (or cursed) with the ability to read the minds of people around her, and the acting required to pull off the visual and aural riffs on her ability is so on point, you completely believe it, and even look forward to how she peeks into other folks minds.

Bill Compton, the vampire we get to know best, played by English actor Stephen Moyer (whom I recognized from a Cadfael episode) plays his part of a Civil-War era southern genteel-turned-vampire with a cool hand. He’s lovable, handsome, smart as a whip, a perfect gentleman, and has the most engaging blue eyes of anyone in the series. I fell for his character when we first meet him and during one of the more romantic scenes, I was so caught up in watching him I almost burned dinner.

The other two notables in my book are Sookie’s brother Jason and her best friend Tara. Jason, a troubled but smoking-hot young man who enjoys the pleasures of the female flesh quite a bit, provides perhaps the most skin of the show. But flesh-fest aside, actor Ryan Kwanten has taken what could have been a joke of a character and given him so many levels of depth, it’s nearly impossible to dislike him, even as he learns to hate vampires. I thought, in a strange parallel, how much his character path reminded me of Wicked and the “origins of evil” theme.

Tara, played by Rutina Wesley, daughter of an alcoholic mother (a brilliant Adina Porter), battles nearly everything that comes near her. Angry black woman is where she starts, but after the first twelve episodes, she’s looking in more mirrors than ever before. It’s tough act to play, and at first she seemed to be very one note. But slowly the layers emerge and she comes into her own in the series.
I could keep writing about True Blood for another few pages. But if I did that I’d start to letting spoilers slip out left and right. Thus far I don’t think I’ve written anything that will spoil the series, but I do hope you dig around and watch the series because, as much success as Six Feet Under Had, True Blood has that same potential. I hope season two is just as engaging.






