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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 9, No. 36 |
At left, ANNA PAQUIN, looking tasty enough for a hungry vampire like STEPHEN MOYER, who claims he's happy drinking the new artificial blood, although one suspects he may feel a little nostalgic about the real organic stuff. |
HBO invades 'Dexter'
territory with 'True Blood'
of TheColumnists.com
It figured that the always competitive HBO sooner or later would try to come up with a new series to rival Showtime's "Dexter," the grisly-but-amusing weekly series about a serial killer who works for the Miami P.D. as a blood splatter analyst.
And so here is "True Blood," the charming story of vampires who finally "come out" to join the human race after a new artificial blood goes on the market and satisfies all their cravings, enabling them to engage in social relationships with humans that don't always finish with tiny puncture wounds in human throats.
Whimsical like "Dexter," it also takes itself reasonably seriously when it comes to both blood and sex, those two reliable stables of premium network pay TV shows. I was quite amused by the lengthy "home movie" a daring lady made of a lusty vampire making love to her in her own bedroom. We saw this, unfortunately, because somebody later murdered the lady.
But the important thing is to notice how frisky male vampires can get when they know they're now able to have sex with human ladies like they never had them before. I mean, think about it. Most of their human sex partners just didn't get into the fun before. In fact, most of them just used to just lie there as if they were dead. Come to think of it, they probably did that because THEY WERE DEAD!
But now the vampires don't have to drain your blood to show you a good time, although I suspect they still like to "mark up" their sex partners a little just for the sake of tradition.
"TrueBlood" is lots of fun because it appears to be put together pretty much like a mystery series with the vampires always being rounded up like "the usual suspects" any time there's a killing in the Louisiana bayou town where the storyline takes place.
Our heroine is Sookie (Anna Paquin), a waitress at "Merlotte's Bar & Grill," who is drawn to the pale, weathered-looking vampire known as "Bill" the way some girls are drawn to bikers or other men with that "element of danger" about them. Though she may not be Miss America material, Sookie is nice looking enough and likes to wear her clothes a little tighter than really necessary, which tends to display her curvy parts to maximum effect.
(And if her name sounds familiar, Anna Paquin is the grown-up version of the juvenile actress who won the 1993 best supporting actress Oscar for "The Piano.")
Actually, Sookie is your typical small town girl, longing for adventure. If that means dating a vampire, well, she's game for it, although she tells "Bill" it would have been a lot more romantic if he'd been called "Antoine" or "Basil" or something a little more stirring than just plain "Bill."
If you're a 20something reader, you may feel this all sounds somewhat familiar--and that's probably because "True Blood" is adapted from the "Southern Vampire" series of novels by Charlaine Harris that have been a rage among mostly young female readers who find Nancy Drew a little bloodless for their modern tastes.
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who never drank wine, "Bill" is a vampire who can enjoy a beer now and then, especially while staring down the bodice of Sookie (Anna Paquin), who clearly has fresh red blood pumping in her veins. |
I'm not sure exactly where "True Blood" is going, but I have a feeling we're going to get interested in some vampires suspected of crimes they didn't commit and whatever the dewy-eyed Sookie leads us into. The first episode introduced lots of potentially interesting characters, including several rednecks who seem determined to reverse the natural order of things and start draining blood from vampires.
The macabre creative mind behind the TV series is Alan Ball, who did the same thing for his last HBO hit series, "Six Feet Under." Ball was also the Oscar-winning screenwriter of 1999's Best Picture "American Beauty," one of the most original and innovative films of its day.
Whether or not "True Blood" can hold us in thrall with the suspense that "Dexter" offers on Showtime on the same night remains to be seen. ("Dexter" returns Sept. 28 at 9 p.m. with new episodes.) But HBO is going to do its darndest to get us interested in the lives of "recovering" vampires and their new friends in the human race, so I'm going to go along for the ride and see what happens.
©2008 by Ron Miller. The photos are courtesy of HBO. This column first posted Sept. 15, 2008.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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