http://slyoyster.com

I finally got a chance to see HBO’s new vampire series True Blood, based upon the Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris.  Leading up to the series I was worried about the marketing of the series and curious how this thing would play out.

After only one episode it’s tough to determine how I feel about it, just because there isn’t a lot of material to go on.  But any worries about the series’s tone are pretty much gone.  Yes, the marketing was pretty much crap, however the bayou vampire tales seems perfectly atune to creator Alan Ball’s sense of dark humor and fantasy.  The show is shot, in terms of cinematography, very much like Ball’s first show Six Feet Under.

All I know so far is that Sookie (Anna Paquin) is a telepathic waitress who becomes anamored with the 173-year-old vampire Bill.  She’s stuck in her little world with her saucy friend Tara.  Not a whole lot happens in the first episode plotwise because it needs to establish all the characters who inhabit this world.  Vampires are out of the coffin due to the Japanese product Tru Blood, a synthetic blood.  It is strange to see a vampire world where there is no slayer or vampire hunter or whatnot.  In that sense, this is a take on the vampire mythos worth watching and difficult to gage exactly where the show is heading.

A few minor caveats: if Sookie can read minds why is she a measly waitress in Louisianna, wouldn’t she put that to better use?  Bad, bad southern accents.  Also, the vampire teeth FX were pretty horrible and not the least bit believable (they are sorta like a switchblade complete with a SFX similar to when Wolverine unleashes his claws).  Finally, and this should be no surprise to Alan Ball fans, but I hope the show doesn’t keep with the overt vampires as symbolism for homosexuals.  I’m not against exploring that subtext or even having that be one level of the show, but it comes off as sloppy and hamhanded and not the work of a master like Alan Ball.

So far so good though.  And how about those opening credits?

It worries me slightly that HBO is going to such great lengths to promote or viralize the upcoming Alan Ball vampire show True Blood . It also worries me that they aren’t doing a very good job of it, or that it takes so many variables, like fake commercials, fake websites, comic books, et cetera to establish the world they’ve created for the show. I know that’s the standard operating procedure for marketing nowadays, but still. It’s just a television show.

In the show, Vampires are out of the closet and drinking the Japanese product Tru Blood, which allows them to walk amongst us.  Couldn’t all of this be done through clever background? We still know very little about the actual nuts and bolts of the show.

I’m not sure how HBO and Alan Ball (Six Feet Under & American Beauty scribe) will pull off a vampire show or what the angle will be on vampires, but the notion that vampires can walk amongst regular humans because of a product from Japan called Tru Blood is intriguing.

The poster was sorta meh?, but the viral videos on YouTube providing lots of background for the show are promising, or maybe the right word is intriguing.

Still, it stars Anna Paquin, as a barmaid in Louisiana who can read people’s minds. It’s based on the “Southern Vampire” series of books by Charlaine Harris. We’ll at least be checking it out when it debuts on Sept. 7. Since we love all things vampires.

Hopefully, some sort of slayer or big corporation conspiracy will take place, or at the very least Kate Beckinsale will show up in some leather outfit.