There’s a very, very fine line between violence and sex, as any serial killer will no doubt tell you. Both speak to a kind of raw, primal animalism. A sort of inner beast that lies within otherwise relatively straight laced human beings. Supernatural based fiction it seems, understands this all too well, what with Vampires always creeping in through open bedroom windows and harassing young women in their negligees and the inexplicable way that anyone with the power to turn into a wolf is a tanned, glistening, muscly teen-aged poster fantasy, I mean why bother working out, you can turn into a freaking wolf. A wolf!
It was a logical conclusion therefore that eventually somebody would put two and two together and work out that this seedy, slightly twisted allure people seem to have towards the violent, sexual undertones associated with supernatural beings of myth and legend could be fashioned into a TV series updated for the eyes and ears of today’s, modern, sexually emancipated viewer, creating something resembling softcore, TV crack for angsty teenage girls and BDSM fanatics, and lo, there we had it. True Blood.
Fine, technically we had the Southern Vampire Mysteries, the books by Charmaine Harris which the tv series is based on, but I haven’t read them, so I can’t comment on the novels in comparison to the TV show, in fact, forget I mentioned them at all.
True Blood is basically late night Twilight, it’s Twilight XXX, the back room you can only get into if you whisper a few words in the barman’s ear and surreptitiously slip twenty quid into his top pocket. Well OK, that’s not quite true. Perhaps a more accurate description of True Blood would be Twilight meets Game of Thrones meets The Dukes of Hazard meets Deliverance meets American Horror Story meets Carry on Camping.
The show follows the trials and tribulations of Sookie Stackhouse. A small town Louisiana, cocktail waitress whose first name sounds like a stifled sneeze and possesses all the buxom southern charm of well, every other southern, small town cocktail waitress featured on television.
Sookie is happily getting on with her quaint, wholesome rural life in nobodygivesashit’s-ville, Bible Belt, USA when a mysterious, dark eyed stranger rolls into town. His name is Bill Compton and he’s pale, aloof and all sorts of creepy. Yeah, right, five guesses where this is going.
That’s right, he’s a Vampire, but he’s not trying to hide it from anyone because here’s the twist. Everyone knows about Vampires. Yes, it appears the Vampire race became tired of their windswept lairs and remote, foreboding castles, choosing to “come out of the coffin” (That is literally the phrase they use) and integrate themselves into polite society.
Fair enough you might say, open minded, progressive sort that you no doubt are, but naturally some people were less than pleased by terrifying, bloodsucking beasts of legend moving in next door and lowering the house prices, and so a great cultural conflict has engulfed America, which presumably gave Pat Buchanan something to do again. There’s an obvious political commentary to all of this, although I have slightly more sympathy for those whose prejudices relate to an altogether more rational fear of creatures that literally feed of the life force of the living than I do for say, the Ku Klux Klan.
So when Bill Compton arrives to claim back his ancestral family seat in the heart of po’ dunk, Rick Santorum-land, he stops off at the local bar to have himself a refreshing bottle of synthetic human blood (no, seriously) only to be promptly accosted by a couple of slack-jawed rubes wielding silver chains who intend to drain his blood and sell it, now a lucrative, narcotic known as “V” which appears to be a sort of super cross breed between Viagra and PCP.
Not to worry though, because our heroine Sookie is on hand to save him, and soon the two begin an intimate relationship, with all the hilarious, logistical issues that naturally come with that. Not to mention lots of throat ripping, rogue vampires, evangelical vampire hunting churches, big, creole werewolf dudes, human corruption, vampire corruption, fairies and some truly bizarre mythological love triangles.
Oh yeah and Sookie can read people’s minds, which is why she’s never had a boyfriend before, because well, she knows what men think about and that, ladies, is not a superpower you desire. However as Bill is a vampire she can’t read his mind, for like some reason. Anyway just thought I should bring that up.
So that’s the plot, but what’s it actually like? I hear you cry. Well it certainly doesn’t disappoint on the sex and violence front. Literally every episode has at least two, prolonged and occasionally painfully graphic sex scenes along with enough bloodshed to re paint a two bedroom house. They even manage to combine the two when the Vampires start getting in on the lovemaking. Some of the dialogue is actually pretty inspired and the show has a fantastically deadpan sense of humor when it can manage to get away from all the brooding, emo twilight cliches of the Vampire-Human relationship.
The show can also be proud of its large, well developed and genuinely lovable supporting cast, boasting some truly, stellar performances. A fan favorite, Nelsan Ellis’ character, Lafayette Reynolds throws down sassy one liners the way only a black, gay short order fry cook in a floral du rag can. Ellis’ portrayal of the character has been so well received he actually saved the fictional man’s life, with the Lafayette of the books dying more or less half way through the first chapter.
In the end, True Blood can be credited with a certain kind of dark, majestic beauty, although much in the same way as that art house pornography which tries to deny what it really is. In this case, teenage masturbation material, if not literally (although almost certainly literally, let’s face it) then at least metaphorically, because if you’re watching this, it means you must get your rocks off to the sight of supernatural vice and depravity at least to some degree, and let me tell you, it’s no accident there’s so much of it in there.
Despite this, True Blood manages to be more than a grindhouse adaption of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Its deceptively complex storyline and broad and well thought out backstory and mythos, in particular it’s portrayal of the internal politics of the Vampires and the plethora of mythological creatures which are introduced in later seasons, add a level of depth and sophistication which elevate it above Hostel levels of tits and gore purely for tits and gore’s sake. I was slightly befuddled by some later plot developments which seemed to suggest that almost everybody in this small Louisiana town was a closet supernatural being and I had to turn it off for five minutes when the show tried to get me to run with the concept of a “were-panther”. But in truth, it’s enticing, addictive and ultimately, if you can get over some of its missteps and frankly ludicrous moments, it’s well worth a watch. Oh and the theme song ”Bad Things” by Jace Everett, will stick in your head for about a month, watch out for that.