The fugitive kind
-
- September
- 5
“True Blood” — the new HBO vampire series from “Six Feet Under” creator Alan Ball — is more blood than true. The show, which bows at 9 p.m. Sunday, seeks to fill the void of R-rated hits on HBO left by the departed “Six Feet Under” and “The Sopranos.”
The irony is that “True Blood” might become an R-rated hit if it didn’t try so hard to be one.The series is based on the Southern Vampire Novels of Charlaine Harris, a self-described Arkansas wife and mother who loves to read and watch her sports-playing kids from uncomfortable bleachers. The first season, based on her wonderfully titled “Dead Until Dark,” follows the gory goings-on in the tiny, mossy town of Bon Temps, La. in the near future, when vampires, pumped full of synthetic blood, have “come out of the coffin” to demand their civil rights.
This has not gone down easy with the less-than-good people of Bon Temps. One resident who does not share their fears and prejudices, however, is Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin)— a waitress at the roadside joint Merlotte’s. For one thing, Sookie is a plucky type with a kind heart. For another, she has an unusual gift that may be more terrifying than any vampiric powers: She can hear people’s thoughts.
So when 173-year-old Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer, pictured above courtesy of HBO) sets himself down one night in Merlotte’s — looking for a glass of vamp juice or maybe just a bit of human company — it’s no surprise that Sookie, another outsider, should be drawn to the drop-dead gorgeous stranger. And it’s equally inevitable that he and his fugitive kind should be implicated in the murder of no-account “fang-banger” Maudette Pickens, whose recent lovers included Sookie’s hot-headed brother, Jason (Ryan Kwanten).
Harris’ vamp books — which blend mystery, romance and humor — are like sunlight streaming through lace kitchen curtains or a slice of warm apple tart: They’re sensuous but homey.
What is piquant on paper can be overwhelming on screen. A TV producer wouldn’t have to do much more than present Harris’ world to have a savory show. What Ball has done, however, is ratchet up the sex and violence — to say nothing of the Southern stereotypes — to the point where the filigree eccentricity of Harris’ storytelling is muddled.
What saves the show for me is the relationship between Sookie and Bill, which goes against the series’ slam-bam grain. Sookie is the type of young woman who has already endured much heartache and yet can still find a goodness in this world. Paquin plays her with a saucy innocence that reminds you of Holly Hunter — and further reminds you that she won an Oscar playing Hunter’s daughter in “The Piano.”
Her sympathetic turn is matched by Moyer’s Bill Compton. For all his hooded brooding, blood-lust and brute strength, Bill is a lonely, vulnerable creature, haunted by the loss of his wife and children and his own life in the Civil War era. His courtliness toward Sookie — “May I call on you sometime?” he asks — is a remnant of that loss. He is touched by her incorruptibility, her very aliveness. Their slow dancing — amid the series’ dirty dancing — is charming and poignant.
Though most of the actors are playing variations on the Southern clichés familiar to anyone who has ever seen a Hollywood movie about the South, one supporting performance does stand out — Lois Smith as Sookie’s grandmother Adele. Far from being frightened by Bill, Adele is immediately charmed by his old-fashioned manners and thinks he’d make a good guest speaker for the local historical society. (Clever that.) For me, Smith will always be the timid teenager beguiled by James Dean in “East of Eden.”
If only Ball would take his foot off the pedal and trust such characters. Oddly enough, HBO pokes fun of its R-rated image in “True Blood.” Early on, one of Sookie’s trashy waitress-colleagues tells her child over the phone that if her babysitting boyfriend du jour says the kid can’t watch a violent program on HBO, then he can’t watch the show.
HBO should heed its own mockery.
This entry was posted
on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 5:06 pm by Georgette Gouveia.
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