True Blood: Season 3

Following the hedonistic reign of terror of the redoubtable Maryann, the residents of Bon Temps are once again trying to pull their lives back together. For Sookie Stackhouse, events are complicated by the disappearance of her vampire lover Bill Compton, the emergence of a bunch of werewolves on the scene and the machinations of the vampire King of Mississippi. Meanwhile, Sookie's brother Jason pursues a new career in law-enforcement, Sam Merlott tracks down his real parents and Jessica, now broken up with Hoyt, embraces her vampire side more freely. Meanwhile (again), Lafayette gets a boyfriend called Jesus (True Blood? Controversial? Never!) and there are some meth-dealing hicks around causing mischief. And there's this werewolf called Alcide who fancies Sookie and spends a fair bit of time with his shirt off. And Tara gets emotionally abused (yet again) by Thomas Cromwell from The Tudors. And a whole ton of other stuff happened which I'm forgetting right now.


True Blood has always been a nutty, camp, somewhat trashy but always resolutely entertaining show, but its third season is nothing less than a sustained, full-scale assault on the viewer's senses and sanity. Learning from the pacing problems in Season 2 (where the latter part of the season degenerated into a tiresome parade of filler orgy scenes for no discernible plot reason), Alan Ball has massively overcompensated, packing every single instant of this season with surprising plot revelations, new characters, surprise reappearances of old characters (including dead ones), new ideas, new races, new concepts and, indeed, the kitchen sink. It's certainly not a dull season, but it is one that is overloaded to the point of near-incoherence.

If it's possible to pick out a central thread from this anarchic and demented tapestry of pure chaos, it's the attempt by the vampire King of Mississippi, Russell Edgington, to reverse the policy of appeasement by vampires towards humans and have vampires seize control of the world. Edgington is as barmy as a box of frogs on ecstasy (but still a long way from being the craziest character on the show this season) but is extraordinarily entertaining, played with scene-chewing relish by Denis O'Hare. His lover Talbot, played by Theo Alexander, is almost as amusing. This storyline, where Eric and Bill pretend (or do they?) to defect from the Queen of Lousiana's side to Edgington's and political machinations unfold at his stately home, is the definite highlight of the year, despite the presence of a number of extremely cheesy actors playing 'evil' werewolves who are allied to Edgington.

The werewolf storyline otherwise doesn't really go anywhere, despite the pre-season hype touting this as 'the werewolf season'. We do get a promising new regular character in the form of 'good' werewolf Alcide (Joe Manganiello) who manages to remain likable despite inexplicably being attracted to Sookie, who is at her most annoying this year. Hopefully he gets more to do next year.

Other storylines range from the mind-bogglingly inane (the meth-dealing hillbilly plot is almost breathtaking in its utter lack of enjoyability) to the compelling (Jessica and Hoyt continue to have the most believable relationship and best chemistry of any pairing on the show). Tara gets emotionally and physically abused and manipulated again to the point where the viewer is in severe danger of losing the last vestiges of sympathy and respect for the character. This story is somewhat saved by James Frain's completely bonkers performance as mentally unstable vampire Franklin Mott (who makes the King of Mississippi look like a stable and reliable fellow), but the writers need to stop using Tara as their emotional punch-bag, especially since they relent with her cousin Lafayette and give him a reasonably happy storyline, complete with a new love interest (which was great up until the hippy-trippy voodoo vision stuff kicked in).

There's also a series of plot revelations that hark back to the beginning of Season 1 and earlier, particularly retconning the backstories and motivations for Sam and Bill. In the former case this is laughably unbelievable, whilst the latter works better. Whilst Sookie is rather unlikable this year, Stephen Moyer's performance seems to improve once Bill is given more layers and made into a more duplicitous character than we first thought he was.

Overall, this season of True Blood is watchable, but also often headache-inducingly overwrought. The 'Arlene's baby' storyline is unnecessary and tedious, as is the story about Jason's latest romance. The less said about the introduction of the Fae (supernatural beings who apparently dwell within the mystical realm of a Timotei advert) the better. However, we also get a lot more screen-time for Eric and Pam, which is great, and we also get one of the most demented TV cliffhangers of all time:

True Blood's third season (***) is a cataclysmic explosion of sleaze, storylines and characters, some of which are compelling and some of which are barely watchable tedium. Sorting the good from the bad is hard work this year, but the show is never less than watchable, if also frequently achieving far less than its potential. The series will be available in the USA (DVD, Blu-Ray) and in the UK (DVD) in 2011.

True Blood: Season 2

Picking up events three weeks after the end of Season 1, the second season of True Blood opens with people trying to get back to normal life in Bon Temps, Louisiana, following the resolution of the serial killer problem. For the staff and regulars at Merlotte's this is complicated by the disappearance of their cook, Lafayette, under strange circumstances. Meanwhile, Jason Stackhouse has found religion and is being drawn into the orbit of the Fellowship of the Sun, an anti-vampire fundamentalist group, whilst Sookie and Bill's relationship continues to develop. The disappearance of Godric, the vampire sherrif of Texas, has Eric calling on Sookie and Bill's aid to help find him, meaning they are out of town when newcomer Maryann begins to have a very odd influence on the people of the town. Oh yes, and Bill also has a freshly-risen vampire protege, Jessica, to deal with.


True Blood's second season hits the ground running with a number of complex storylines in progress or just getting underway. As a result the second season has less of an introductory feel than the first, and cuts to the chase much more quickly. There's less of Sookie changing her mind every five minutes about whether she wants to be with Bill or not and more focus on more dynamic storylines, which is what the series needed after the first season, which got bogged down a few times.

The fact that Sookie and Bill are now together and that's pretty much it (despite a couple of curveballs sent towards the relationship late in the season) results in Anna Paquin raising her game notably. Whilst always decent in the role of Sookie, the character's frequent changes in attitude in Season 1 gave the impression of leaving her unsure about how to play the character. In Season 2 she is visibly more confident about the character and that comes through in a stronger, more interesting performance. Stephen Moyer also has an ability to relax and add a bit more humour to the character of Bill, which mostly comes out in his interactions with Jessica and Eric.

Deborah Ann Woll first appeared at the end of Season 1 as Jessica, but she's a regular in Season 2 and delivers a great performance as the stroppy teenage vampire who isn't initially particularly happy about her lot, but then finds vampirism an excellent way to rebel against her strict Christian upbringing. Her interactions with Moyer and also with Jim Parrack as her love interest Hoyt are very well-written and performed.

Alexander Skarsgard also gives an increasingly excellent performance as Eric. He hits impressive heights towards the end of the season when his carefully-cultivated sense of unflappable stoicism is shattered. We also get to see his life as a human in flashback, adding additional layers to his character.

Most of the rest of the cast are great, particularly Michelle Forbes as Maryann, a seeming hedonist who just wants people to have a good time. The unveiling of her true motives is well-done and Forbes seems to have a ball playing a more overt villain than some of her other roles (such as the much greyer Admiral Caine in BSG).

The season's structure works quite well, with Sookie and Bill's adventures in Texas, Jason's storyline at the nearby Fellowship of the Sun church and events back in Bon Temps unfolding in tandem, allowing the story to skip around to another location whenever one storyline starts running out of steam. However, whilst the Texas storyline is well-developed and resolved fairly quickly (in eight episodes), arguably the Fellowship storyline remains pretty predictable and its depiction as a bunch of fundamentalist whackjobs is too simplistic, given the moral complexities of the story explored elsewhere. Events in Bon Temps also unfold far more quickly than is necessary, meaning that the latter half of the season seems to be almost entirely taken up by disturbing magic-driven orgy rituals and Sam running around with various people chasing him, waiting for Sookie and Bill to get back from their storyline to help resolve things.

Still, the show remains well-written and entertaining, and even if it does lack the depth of a lot of other HBO shows it is also a lot funnier (even if that humour is as black as midnight) than some of them. The final episode also does a good job of setting up Season 3, with the introduction of Evan Rachel Wood as the Vampire Queen of Louisiana (a great performance based on 1950s starlets) and several plot elements that look set to be more thoroughly explored next year.

True Blood's second season (****) will be released in the USA (DVD, Blu-Ray) and UK (DVD, no Blu-Ray listing yet) in 2010.

True Blood: Season 1

Two years ago vampires 'came out of the closet' and joined mainstream society, freed from their thirst for human blood by a synthetic substitute called Tru Blood. The USA and the rest of the world are gripped by debates and dissent between those opposed to vampires having equal rights and people championing a new civil rights movement. The residents of Bon Temps, Louisiana have to make their own minds up when a vampire named Bill Compton moves into town and immediately strikes up a curious friendship with local waitress Sookie Stackhouse.


But shortly after his arrival, people who associate with vampires start being murdered. It appears a serial killer is on the loose and Sookie is on his list of targets...

True Blood is the latest hit show from HBO, and their biggest success since the heyday of The Sopranos. Based on the Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries by Charlaine Harris and developed for television by Alan Ball, creator of Six Feet Under, the show initially appears to be a trashy adult answer to the current craze for vampire books and films: the NC-17 version of Twilight, as it were. However, this is a simplistic analysis of the show, which is actually tackling a number of more interesting ideas and themes underneath its slightly sleazy veneer.

The show starts off a little slow, and it has to be said that the dancing around of the will they-won't they relationship between Sookie and Bill is a little tedious after the first couple of episodes. Luckily, the writers clearly aren't interested in keeping that going for the lifetime of the series, so they let the characters get together and see what happens next. This relationship is the core of the show and Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer (who amusingly first played a vampire in the brilliant Ultraviolet mini-series a decade ago) sell it very well (and they got into a real-life relationship shortly after starting the show as well). Moyer as Bill in particular has some nice moments as he is very much a Southern courtly gentleman from the Civil War era making an effort to go 'mainstream', but he also doesn't have any problems with killing people who have wronged him or tasting human blood as long as he doesn't kill them. This somewhat hypocritical attitude is played well, but he isn't entirely called on it before the end of the season, so it's unclear if it's deliberate or not. Paquin has a much harder role to play, and there are moments where the actress seems to struggle with what's going on in her character's head, but at other times she does an excellent job.

Amongst the other cast members, Chris Bauer (Frank Sobotka from The Wire) and William Sanderson (the toymaker from Blade Runner) are superb as the town's ineffectual policemen. Ryan Kwanten has a really tough role as Sookie's quite spectacularly stupid brother, who dodges disaster by the skin of his teeth only to get into an even more spectacular mess later on. He just about manages to retain the viewer's sympathy even as the character's life becomes yet another car crash, which is a tribute to the actor. Rutina Wesley plays Sookie's best friend Tara and is rather tiresome to start off with, coming across a bit too much as a hard-assed, don't-need-no-man, all-attitude character but she rapidly becomes one of the show's strongest assets. The scenes where Tara has to confront her mother's alcoholism are superbly well-acted by both parties. Alexander Skarsgard steals every scene he is in as Louisiana's vampire 'sherrif', Eric, especially when paired with Kristin Bauer as his second-in-command, Pam. Lizzy Caplan also needs a nod as psychopathic hippy Amy, who has to combine two very different sides of her character to make a convincing whole and pulls it off. Nelsan Ellis is also excellent as Tara's highly dubious but charismatic cousin Lafayette (who impressively combines the roles of cook, road-digger, drug-dealer and webcam sex actor).

In addition to these characters, there's a vast number of secondary, recurring and guest actors and characters, from Heroes' Željko Ivanek as a vampire judge to TNG and BSG actress Michelle Forbes as a very curious new character who appears at the end of the season, and pretty much all of them are great in their roles.

The question of what True Blood is actually about is a difficult one to answer. On the surface, it's a simple murder mystery with vampires, a lot of sex and some quite spectacular gore (especially towards the end of the season). Of course, it's Alan Ball and it's HBO, so it can't be as simple as that. The show initially seems to be contrasting vampires and their struggle for acceptance with gay and black people, which is an interesting idea, if a bit superficial. However, our brief glimpses into the vampire society reveals that the vampires' bigotry and dislike of humans is far more ingrained in them than dislike of vampires is in human society, so the comparison seems to shift of one of a clash of completely incompatible cultures. If even Bill, the 'poster boy for mainstreaming', still does reprehensible and disturbing things, that suggests that the vampires may simply not be that interested in joining real human society. If that is true, that raises the question of what actually is their goal in coming out into the open? It'll be intriguing to see if this is a genuine plot point or simply a background premise that you have to go with and ignore the inconsistencies in order to enjoy the show.

Other issues are also dealt with in a rather puzzling manner, such as Tara's mother's alcoholism. The character blames her alcoholism on a 'demon' living in her soul and, since this is a show about vampires after all, the viewer is unsure whether to dismiss this as an excuse from a woman living in denial of her own failures or if there really is a supernatural element involved. It takes a surprisingly long time for the truth of this plot point to come out into the open, although it's quite clever when it does emerge. Similarly, the odd behaviour of certain characters is highlighted throughout the series, presumably to make us ponder if they could be the serial killer, so that when it is revealed they are not, the 'real' reasons for their odd behaviour don't seem to entirely explain their odd quirks.

On the other hand, the show doesn't seem to entirely take itself too seriously. It also seems to be well aware of the minefield of possible ways it has to offend the viewers, with quite a few black, gay and/or religious characters, and seems to get around the issues by lots of what TV Tropes calls lampshade-hanging (i.e. drawing attention to the issue and almost revelling in it rather than ignoring it). The show also takes what appears to be an overtly anti-Twilight agenda by refusing to have Sookie be rescued out of her predicaments by the various men-folk in her life (probably best-handled in the season finale) and turning her into a proactive character rather than a damsel in distress all the time, which is vital if we are to retain any respect and sympathy for the character.

True Blood's first season (****) is solid, enjoyable fun with some deeper ideas and themes running through it than it first appears. It's slightly trashy and sleazy (although never quite fulfilling the promise of its borderline-sordid title sequence) and on that level won't appeal to all viewers, but it's consistently well-written and superbly-acted, and is well worth a look. It is available now in the USA (DVD, Blu-Ray) and next month in the UK (DVD, Blu-Ray). Season 2 just finished airing in the USA and a third season will follow next summer.