True Blood : No TV doldrums for 'the haves'

From Boston Globe

AMERICA has become a have and have-not society - those who have HBO and Showtime and those who are dependent on the networks.
At no time is that more clear than in June, a traditional time of dread on the networks, whose idea of daring programming is to stick Jay Leno into prime time. And you'll have to wait for September for that "historic" event.

But for pay-cable subscribers, it's always September, as we get ready for "Weeds," about a drug-dealing suburban mother, and the new Edie Falco series, "Nurse Jackie," about a drug-abusing medical practitioner, both on Showtime beginning Monday. The vampire series "True Blood" returns to HBO June 14 and the new comedy series "Hung" follows at the end of the month. The title will have to suffice as the description.

Transgression is the common theme to all these shows, as it has been for most of the pay-cable series from "The Sopranos" onward. For some, like "The Tudors," transgression can come a little too easily, which makes it easy to dismiss pay-cable series as catering to a prurient love of sex and violence or to an adolescent celebration of drugs.

It would also be wrong. The level of sophistication in the writing on these shows is quite remarkable, both in terms of the script and the issues they tackle. Take "True Blood," which on the surface caters to popular taste for all things vampiric; hot bodies having hot sex; and, every now and then, a bit of ultraviolence. They're based on the entertaining enough Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris, but like Alfred Hitchcock or Stanley Kubrick in "The Shining," the HBO producers and writers (led by Alan Ball of "Six Feet Under") raise the pulp material to another level, fueled by a juke-joint soundtrack that might even one-up the music of "The Sopranos."

The satire of the religious right, as one example of the show's themes, is razor sharp. Sookie is a waitress who's fallen in love with a sexy, Civil War veteran of a vampire, which drives her brother into greater and greater paroxysms of hatred for the fanged ones, who are continually campaigning for human rights. Or maybe posthuman rights. This season, the brother takes a W-like sudden turn from party boy to religious convert and hero of right-thinking folk. "It's always something out there that gets all the blame or all the credit," says another character, "whether it's Jesus or gin.

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