Blood-sucking show gets addictive

From the Vancouver sun

True Blood is about to get under the skin again.

In its first season, Alan Ball's slow-burning Gothic thriller about modern-day vampires eking out a blood-soaked, sex-fuelled existence in the backcountry bayous of Louisiana touched a nerve in viewers -- and not just fans of Gothic author Charlaine Harris's brisk-selling Sookie Stackhouse novels.

True Blood was like nothing else on TV -- and that was just the way Ball intended it.

Now that the curtain has risen last weekend on True Blood's sophomore season, Ball warns viewers to expect more of the same -- which is to say, nothing is the same, and events unfold suddenly and without warning.

At its heart, True Blood remains an allegory about relationships -- human and not-so-human.

"A theme that seems to crop up in a lot of my work is the peril of intimacy," Ball explained earlier this year.

In an earlier life, Ball created the Emmy Award-winning Six Feet Under and won a best screenplay Oscar for writing American Beauty.

True Blood, though, is different.

Winnipeg-born Anna Paquin returns for a second season as Sookie Stackhouse, the hard-luck diner waitress who can hear other people's thoughts

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