Well, Dubya Bush may have finally been defeated and forced to return to the kindly family of armadillos that raised him, but don’t expect America to suddenly become as pure as the Superfriend’s Hall of Justice after a visit from Whitewash Man. Plenty of minority groups still have it tough- gays and lesbians can’t marry in California; furries are still denied appropriate-sized kennels in Las Vegas, and all over the USA, vampires can’t rip open the neck of a buxom cheerleader and drain her jugular vein of its lifeblood without a certain brand of Christians going off about the undead being ‘evil and unnatural’. Oh, you missed that last one? Sounds like you suffer from vampire entertainment anaemia. My diagnosis? An immediate transfusion of TRUE BLOOD (Tuesdays, Showcase-7:30pm).
TRUE BLOOD comes from the mind and pen of Alan Ball, creator of the blackly comedic cult series SIX FEET UNDER, which dealt with the comings and goings (often literally, in both senses) of a family of undertakers.
The series takes place in New Orleans, in a world in which scientists have engineered a synthetic blood substitute, ‘True Blood’. Originally designed to help hospitals with transfusion shortages, True Blood has the unexpected side effect of being the perfect food for vampires. Buffy would be choking on her impractical and ungainly platform sandals, but thanks to True Blood, vampires worldwide have ‘come out of the coffin’ and are enjoying an uneasy truce with humanity- much to the disdain of (surprise!) the Vatican. They’ve have roundly condemned vampires as ‘unnatural, an abomination and a threat to the family’- big talk from a bunch of men who drink the blood of their God every weekend!
This is a typically original and refreshing Ball production with a clever take on the vampire legend- making vampirism a metaphor for homosexuality. The series sports Christian groups picketing vampire schools (one sign reading ‘God hates Fangs’ another ‘Only Jesus brings eternal life’) Some vampires, for their part, are less than impressed with True Blood and are pushing for a return to the predatory old ways of opera capes, bats and laughing accompanying lightning flashes every time you successfully count something.
Nor is vampirism as a metaphor the only mention of homosexuality in the series; the cast has an equal number of bloodsuckers and…other kinds of suckers. Gay characters include) Lafayette Reynolds (Nathan Ellis)- an unapologetic ‘Riverboat Queen’, and Terry Bellefleur (Tod Lowe) a bartender at the local watering hole (just don’t ask for a Bloody Mary) who is revealed later to be secretly sleeping with the town’s thousand –year old vampiric sheriff, Eric (Alexsander Saarsgard).
Oscar-winner Anna Paquin (THE PIANO, X-MEN) plays central character Sookie Stackhouse, a mortal waitress who befriends Lafayette and who develops psychic powers- and a bit of a (blood)lust for her vampire neighbour Bill Compton (hunky Stephen Moyer). Clearly Sookie’s been reading too much TWILIGHT for her own good. Complicating things further is Sookie’s on-again off-again relationship with her boss Sam (Sam Trammel) who is basically human but not above shapeshifting into animal form to spy on his employees (the beast!), and Sookie’s brother Jason (Australian actor Ryan Kwanten) who bonks anything that moves.
Plus there’s murder, illegal wiretapping, illegal vein-tapping, gay sex, dodgy dentistry (the vampires sport fangs on their second incisors, rather than their canines!) funny TV commercials for vampire-centric products (‘If you don’t sleep in a Slumbercrypt coffin, you might as well sleep in a cardboard box!’) a mysterious character traveling around town in a chauffer-driven limo with a pet pig and Ryan Kwanten being naked onscreen so often his ass deserves its own screen credit.
Watch it with a nice glass of red!
