True Blood: A true winner

From The Star Malaysia

WHEN True Blood premiered in the United States in September last year, not all critics were thrilled. Some thought that a show populated by vampires, rednecks and a telepathic waitress was too lowbrow for a channel that brought award-winning heavyweights like Sex and the City, Sopranos, Deadwood and Rome. Could True Blood save HBO from its much-publicised series slump and perhaps bag it an award? Most doubted it.

But fans adored it. Perhaps it was the tongue-in-cheek viral marketing campaign that did the trick. (Vials of fake blood were sent out randomly, and there were online advertisements promoting “Tru Blood”, the synthetic blood drunk by “mainstreaming” vampires like Bill Compton.)

Or perhaps in a world beset by political turmoil and one of the worst financial crises since the Depression, True Blood offered a well-crafted escape into a world where vampires are fighting for “equal rights” and “fangbangers” – human beings who have sex with vampires – are the latest kind of groupies.

And it wasn’t difficult for viewers to be swept away by the forbidden love between psychic waitress Sookie Stackhouse and “vampire Bill”, a 173-year-old former civil war soldier – even if their romance can be painfully maudlin at times. It was just good fun.

True Blood creator Alan Ball certainly thought so when he picked up Charlaine Harris’ Dead until Dark, the first in the series, in a bookstore one day.

“I loved the way it was funny and scary and sexy and romantic, and it had a lot of interesting things to say about what it’s like to be other than mainstream,” says Ball, who became addicted to the series. (The series’ ninth book is coming out next month.)

So that’s how he ended up pitching True Blood to HBO.

But unlike Six Feet Under, his award-winning TV series about a family of undertakers, True Blood has a much lighter tone to it, says Ball. “It’s more of an adventure. It’s a story and a world you’ve never seen before. It’s fun.”

But while Harris’ novels are fluffy and mostly light-hearted, Ball injected more than a bit of his trademark dark humour and nihilism into his screen version.

Read on

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