Fangs this Fall (True Blood Series on HBO)

Hi all,

Yep, summer’s almost over and autumn’s just around the corner. And while I’m not a regular tv watcher (I’m either writing or reading or on the net), I am excited this year because, once again, there’s another vampire series in the lineup. Called “True Blood”, it’s based on Charlaine Harris’ “Dead” series and stars Anna Paquin (yes, the little girl from the movie, The Piano for all us old-timers out there. As an aside, I’d love to see Sam Neill portray a vampire character someday in a movie or tv series but I digress.)

Anyway, I’ve been watching the sneak previews on HBO called “Blood Copy” (think they’re up to 11 episodes now) and they’ve been both funny (‘friends don’t let friends eat friends‘) and thought provoking (‘God hates fangs’) . I’ve seen a short ‘making of’ the series as well and so far, things look good. I even like the folksy character of Bill, the Civil War veteran (looks pretty average until he shows his fangs) since he’s described as such in the Harris’ books. There also seems to be a bit of “Buffy’ mixed into the flavor of the show, particularly when Sookie (Paquin) answers “I’m just a waitress” to the question of “what are you?” I also think I caught a flash in the program of master vamp, Eric, who looks like a head vamp should.

I must confess though, I go into every vampire show now with a measure of tempered excitement. You see, I’ve lived through many, many good vampire shows and their subsequent cancellations. Here is a list of the following vampire shows that I’ve watched (and liked, and were cancelled).

1. Cliffhanger Series (Michael Nouri played Dracula who ‘moonlighted’ as a college prof). I remember watching that series and liking the idea of a more ‘moral’ vampire. Bringing in the mother of the girl in love with Dracula as a vampire added an interesting touch as well. Though the vampires couldn’t help but to kill their victims for their blood, it was one of the first series that suggested that there might be something to want to live/become undead for.

2. Dark Shadows--I’ve seen much of the original black and white episodes and though Frid did a wonderful job, most of my memories of the show center around the ‘91 remake with Ben Cross. I confess, I was a big Cross fan back in the day (he did a small budget vampire movie called “Nightlife” in addition to doing the tv series “Far Pavilions”. MM Kaye is a wonderful writer and I rec “Far Pavilions” and “Shadow of the Moon” most highly). In my opinion, Cross did a fine Barnabas Collins opposite a sexy Joanna Going but unfortunately, unlike the original which ran for five years and 1225 episodes, the revival only ran 13 episodes. Perhaps the original had too big of faings to follow but in any case, this vampire series got the ax (or the stake, whichever you prefer).

3. The Kindred---Based on the novels, this series was another good one, I thought, but again, was short lived. I liked the bar owning vampire, Lily Langtree as well as the ‘prince of the city’, Julian Luna. It’s sad the actor (Mark Frankel) portraying the sexy vampire was killed in a motorcycle accident soon after the series was cancelled. There were many interesting things about the series (vampires were grouped into different ‘clans’ which explained the differences among the literary vampires). For example, Luna belonged to the business class of vampires called the Ventrue while the rat like vampires belonged to the Nosferatu clan. Each of the clans had a leader who sat in on meetings about vampire business and ‘voted’ for their interests. The analogy of this series of vampires being akin to the Mafia was another interesting idea and again, I wished that there were more episodes.

4. Dracula, the Series. This was a quirky vampire series done primarily for kids on Saturday mornings. Geordie Johnson did a nice job of portraying a very three dimensional Dracula character and Geraint Wyn Davies who was to play vampire Nick on FK was, in this show, the son of the main vampire hunter turned vampire on the show. Davies did a rather lighthearted job of the role and at times, in the beginning of FK, it was hard to see this actor as the very serious Nick. But Davies is a great actor and it didn't take me long to be convinced.

5. Forever Knight--started out as Crimetime after Primetime. Gained a huge following that probably became one of the first fans to translate their love of the series to the net. Great show. If you only want to watch one vampire show, this is the one to see in my opinion. The writers went through many of the issues surrounding vampire lore (religion (don't get me started on the vampires not being able to get into heaven unless they are human episode), suicide, love, loss, etc. I was a big Lacroix fan (PN Elrod, a wonderful writer of another great vampire series wrote two books with the actor who portrayed Lacroix, Nigel Bennett, though the books were not based on the immoral vampire character but a rather, more noble one). Liked the books and rec them highly as well:)

Though I didn't agree with much of the philosophy and wanted to throw a shoe at the tv sometime during each episode, this was the first vampire show that made me want to think more about the issues. And therefore, that's smart tv:)

6. Buffy and 7.Angel. Two of the most successful vampire series. There was much I enjoyed about the series (Spike for one) but I thought that vampires being possessed by demons (when humans ‘lost’ their soul, they gained a demon and were immortal) was a limiting factor when the concept of ‘moral vampires’ was introduced in the series. In any case, it ran for quite some time and provided me a good reason to not only watch tv every week but also, to buy a larger one as well (and a better VCR).

8. Port Charles---I think I was between jobs at the time and ended up watching some daytime tv. And lo and behold, there were vampires on tv. Was great to watch Caleb and Livy negotiate vampire love and desire. Since this was a soap opera, there were many sexy scenes though it wasn’t all fluff. Now and again, there were some questions about morality and vampires that Caleb (Michael Easton) had to deal with. And somehow, men always look sexier wearing fangs:)

9. Ultraviolet--I’m a huge Philip Quast fan (I so wish I could have seen him portray “Juan Peron” in “Evita’) and bought this series solely because he was in it. It was a British series and Quast played a Catholic priest who is dying of cancer. Needless to say, he has some issues to wrestle with as he runs an organization that is trying to find out what the vampires want from us humans these days. It’s a very complex series and presents the watcher with many issues to sort though. Just when you’re ‘sold’ on what the humans have to say about the vamps, a vampire character is introduced and turns it all on its head. Wonderful series, amazing acting. Again, very sad that it was also so short.

10. And 11.Moonlight and Blood Ties---These were two recent series which didn’t last very long either. I really liked Kyle Schmid as Henry (is an amazing actor. I couldn’t believe that he was so young because he had imbued the character with the ‘old soul’, been there, done that qualities which I don’t really see in many young actors/actresses these days. However, what was good was that Schmid kept just enough ‘youth’ in the character, actor was really in his 20s, so that every now and then, one could see a trace of the teenager that the mortal Henry must have been like before his conversion to immortality all those years ago. Blood Ties was on Lifetime, didn’t have that big of a budget and fans were unhappy with a number of things, including the fake looking monsters, the lack of street kid Tony and the never resolved (even a little) tensions between Mike, Vicki and Henry. In one story, Henry listened to Vicki when she thought he wouldn’t and as a reward, she allowed him to feed from her when they were in an elevator. Sexiest scene in the series. Too bad there weren’t more of them.

Moonlight had good characters too (liked Beth, Mick and Josef) and some in jokes (there was a “Lost Boys’ reference in there one week) but the story arc seemed uneven and the death of Beth’s human boyfriend was sudden and very shocking. Though the viewer understood that the human boyfriend was there to fill the ‘other guy’ role, the actor playing Josh did a very nice job and I really came to feel sympathy for him when he realized Beth was in love with Mick. I don’t remember if the writers knew that the series was being cancelled before killing off the human boyfriend but things after that seemed disjointed at best (would have been more interesting in this writer’s opinion if mortal was made immortal). At least, however, the last episode had a somewhat satisfying wrap up.

Am I done? This is all the series I can think of at the moment. But lately, it has been tough for some Sci-Fi series, even ones that did not center on vampires. The Dresden Files was cancelled which I thought was sad. I particularly liked Mann, (another actor who portrayed Javert in addition to Quast) as a ghost.


After looking at all these failed series, one has to wonder, “Is there hope for “True Blood”? I hope so but when making a vampire series one has to watch out for a couple of things. The characters must be adapted from page to screen, not necessarily rigidly so but imbued with enough of the traits to make those of us who’ve read the series to go “OK, that’s how I imaged he/she would look/act”. And how much of the character traits/quirks should the writers keep? It’s always tough to figure out what will translate well from the page to the screen but while I’m certain that the writers for “Blood Ties” thought it was a small thing, I know I was not the only one disappointed to see Henry driving a Jag instead of his trusted BMW.

So, OK, you got the characters and you think you’ve got them looking and acting like they did in the novels. But then, comes the hardest part, the story lines. Keeping them interesting and insightful to BOTH vampire and non vampire fans alike can be the biggest challenge. I know some people who watched “Forever Knight” and were bored with the show but I always enjoyed it for the issues they raised. For example, the vampire suicide episode (vampire actor/playwright decides she’s lived too long and commits suicide by burning in the sun) was a ‘quiet’ episode but one with much meaning to a vampire fan like me. Would non vampire fans wanting to watch a show for pure entertainment be drawn to it? I dunno. And that’s one of the difficulties. To be able to write strong, compelling episodes that vampire fans will want to discuss and debate while everyone is entertained in the process. I don’t think these two ideas (well, three if you layer in the romantic aspects/relationship writing into the series) that I’ve presented are incompatible with each other. But it must be difficult to write to achieve that balance and thus, this is probably the determining factor of whether the series lives or dies or goes to video and becomes undead. Sorry, I couldn't resist:)

True Blood starts Sunday, Sept. 7 on HBO. The stakes (sorry about the pun) are high but the cast is talented and the channel is ‘big’ enough so that I’m betting the production budget is fairly good for each episode. Let us all hope that the stories are not only interesting to us vampire fans but compelling to the regular tv watcher as well. I really enjoy vampire tv series because each one has a different philosophy on immortality and even watching a 'bad' vampire series (is there really one?) it’s interesting as a writer, to see each ‘take’ on it. In any case, tv series provide a short respite from writing. And we all need that every now and again. Let’s hope True Blood has the run that Buffy did. Although, if it does, I think I’m going to need another job just to pay my cable bill. Ah, well, maybe I’ll buy less books. See, now that really is fiction:)


Take care all,
Chris

PS--I also like to watch “The Tudors” and really enjoy the series. It’s not for the kids but has wonderful adult writing and circumstances. Anyway, just wanted to add that Jeremy Northam who portrayed St. Thomas More in the series also seems like an actor who could do a wonderful vampire character as well:)