True Blood : Top TV Picks of 2009

from Televisionary blog

As 2009 begins to wind down, I figured now was the perfect time as any to look back at the series that that have entertained and inspired me over the past calendar year.

And what a year it was for the television industry, which was (and is) still recovering from the writers strike of 2007/08. This past year also saw NBC box up the 10 pm hour for scripted programming, a move that hasn't had quite the effect that the network hoped (I do feel for poor scapegoat Jay Leno), while sending viewers scurrying over to cable, which continued to make huge inroads this year.

True Blood (HBO)

In its second season, HBO's vampire drama True Blood went from being a guilty pleasure to a series that balanced the outright campy with the truly transcendent. By pushing supporting players such as Alexander Skarsgard's Eric, Rutina Wesley's Tara, Sam Trammel's Sam, Nelsan Ellis' Lafayette, Deborah Ann Woll's Jessica, and Allan Hyde's Godric to the foreground, creator Alan Ball and the series' writers deepened the universe of Bon Temps and gave True Blood some of its most heartbreaking and compelling moments with the suicide of Eric's maker Godric and the doomed relationship between Woll's Jessica and Jim Parrack's Hoyt. There are few series that are as gleefully unpredictable than True Blood, a series that rewrites the rules about storytelling while spinning a bloody good yarn.

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