As an insufferable Buffy The Vampire Slayer snob and all round devotee of Joss Whedon’s wonderful product, my first reaction to hearing someone praising True Blood to high heavens and recommending its immediate viewing was to be typically sniffy. After all, the blond girl falling in love with a good guy vampire who is fighting against his evil-doing nature amidst the back drop of a town full of monsters had already been done. And rather well too, thank you very much.
But within seconds of seeing the opening titles of the first ever show, I could see that ‘True Blood’ was a very different kettle of undead fish to the prissy in comparison Buffy. Over the soundtrack of a sleazy country singer crooning that he was keen to do “real bad things with you”, images of sex, decomposing animals, sex, swamps, sex, strippers, sex, baptisms and yet more sex jumped out of the screen and into my overstimulated brain.
These themes were carried onto the first episodes of the first season of HBO’s down n’dirty and very devilish show which is set to begin its fourth in the US in late June. Based on ‘The Southern Vampire Mysteries’ novels by Charlaine Harris, the show is set in a world where an artificial blood product called ‘Tru Blood’ has given vampires the option to come out of the coffin, stand up for their rights and pay taxes rather than hide in the shadows, feasting on waifs, strays and idiot rednecks.
But rather than reflect on how society deals with the integration of a whole new, fang-baring race the show is set almost entirely in the seedy, sweaty, swampy Louisiana town of Bon Temps following the show’s main characters as they spend many happy hours shagging, shouting, sucking and occasionally shooting each other.
True Blood is what would happen if Buffy and the Scooby Gang went tree bark insane and suddenly found the world of S&M attractive, and thought swearing profusely was a very good thing, as the show is littered with vocal vulgarity and scenes of horizontal – and it’s fair share of vertical – jiggery pokery along with buckets and buckets of blood and goo.