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Basic Facts:

Episodes: 12
Runtime: 55 min.
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Premiered: 2008

Format:

Series

Genres:

Drama, Fantasy, Horror

Created By:

Alan Ball

Actors:

Alexander Skarsgard, Anna Camp, Anna Paquin, Chris Bauer, Kristin Bauer, Nelsan Ellis, Rutina Wesley, Ryan Kwanten, Sam Trammell, Stephen Moyer

Made In:

USA

Premiered at:

HBO

Vampires? Super­nat­ural? Both movies and series of the genre are pop­u­lar ever since TV first started. And while some believe in the the forces of the super­nat­ural, most of the peo­ple are skep­tic, but still like to see a hor­ror series on the TV. And while there are many adap­ta­tions of the orig­i­nal vam­pire and Drac­ula sto­ries, this one is dif­fer­ent. While you still have many famil­iar vam­pire ele­ments, parts of the basic myth are changed.

Story

True Blood is based on the book by Char­laine Har­ris called The South­ern Vam­pire Mys­ter­ies. And there are some major changes of the vam­pire myth: vam­pires are immune to the cross and gar­lic or holy water, and they can be seen in the mir­ror. And also, they liv­ing freely among humans. All thanks to break­through Japan­ese sci­en­tist made in cre­at­ing syn­thetic blood that allows to vam­pires to feed on it with­out need to harm humans. And with that they can live like a nor­mal peo­ple. We see them try­ing to fit in and live nor­mal life despite the fact that most of them are hun­dreds of years old and killed many peo­ple to feed themselves.

Sookie and Bill

Main story is set in the small fic­tional town Bon Temps in Louisiana, and vam­pires are not only strange beings there. Sookie Stack­house is wait­ress in the local bar, but she also has tele­pathic abil­i­ties and she can her thoughts of every­one around. She is sort of a out­cast and peo­ple in the town are afraid of her, as much as she is afraid of them. But, one day a vam­pire arrives to town, dif­fer­ent, because she can’t hear his thoughts. His name is Bill Comp­ton and he is 140 years old. She spends a lot of time in his com­pany because here mind is at peace with no exter­nal influence.

Series starts slow, and first few episodes are long intro­duc­tion that at times get bor­ing, but once you get over the ini­tial episodes, series gets much better.

Cast and characters

Stephen Moyer is in the role of vam­pire Bill and he looks very believ­able in the role. In the role of Sookie, we have oscar win­ner Anna Paquin. Rest of the cast is also good, and over the course of first sea­son sev­eral new roles where added as the story evolved.

Pro­duc­tion

Series is cre­ated by Alan Ball for HBO, and pre­miere sea­son had 12 episodes. Due to high rat­ings as expected, series was renewed for sec­ond sea­son. And soon after sec­ond sea­son ended, HBO con­firmed 2 more sea­sons. Visu­ally, series looks really good, but on the other hand is very graphic with a lot of blood and vio­lence. As usual, HBO man­aged to make breath­tak­ing intro. Among many awards series won for the first sea­son most impor­tant are Emmy and Golden Globe.

Con­clu­sion

I really like this type of super­nat­ural thrillers, and after I got over the ini­tial slow start, True Blood devel­oped into a great addi­tion to the genre.