Vampires strike back: 'True Blood' boils anew in Season 2

By Bill Keveney, USA TODAY
These are sanguine times for vampires.

The Twilight novels and movie are huge hits with young women, The Vampire Diaries is coming to CW, and the return of HBO's True Blood (Sunday, 9 p.m. ET/PT) is eagerly awaited by rabid fans.

Buzz has been building for Blood. The show is based on Charlaine Harris' nine-book series about vampires gingerly entering society after the discovery of synthetic blood eliminates the need — if not always the desire — to feed on humans. Season 2 roughly follows Harris' second Sookie Stackhouse novel, Living Dead in Dallas.

In tune with the "popcorn for smart people" label that creator Alan Ball once assigned the show, he promises a second season of "just more — sexier, hotter, funniser, scarier, more violent."

"Nakeder," too, says Anna Paquin, who plays Stackhouse.

As the 12-episode second season opens, telepathic Sookie (Paquin) and the vampire Bill (Stephen Moyer) are a happy couple (Paquin and Moyer are in real life, too) in Bon Temps, a rural Louisiana town surrounded by wild nature, where shape-shifters and otherworldly creatures also live.

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