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Review: 'True Blood,' premiering on HBO

Verne Gay | Off Camera

September 6, 2008

THE SHOW "True Blood"

WHEN|WHERE Premieres tomorrow at 9 p.m. on HBO

REASON TO WATCH Creator Alan Ball ("Six Feet Under," "American Beauty"), plus a good cast that includes veteran stage/TV/ screen actress Lois Smith, who plays Adele "Gran" Stackhouse.

WHAT IT'S ABOUT Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) is a nice Southern girl and a telepathic cutie who waits tables at the

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local bar in the Louisiana town of Bon Temps, which, as you Francophiles are aware, means "Good Times." Yuk, yuk. Good times, indeed. People in this town - most notably, her quasi-imbecilic brother, Jason (Ryan Kwanten) - have very active libidos, although some folks go beyond wondering what sex with a vampire would be like, to having sex with a vampire.

Forgot to tell you about the vampires? They are among us, but are effectively "out" and are contributing members of society. They even have an association that looks out for their interests, and - for all anyone knows - an elected representative in Congress, too. Moreover, they no longer need to suck on live humans because the Japanese invented a synthetic blood ("TruBlood") that works nearly as well. (Note the word "nearly.")

In tomorrow's opener, Sookie is intrigued when a real live vampire (Stephen Moyer) comes in to be served; because she can read minds, she also learns that a creepy couple in the adjoining booth plan to snatch the guy, drain him and sell his vamp blood on the open market. Long story short: She saves him and he later saves her. Perhaps true human/ vamp love is in the offing.

BOTTOM LINE Awful, really. Maybe the Charlaine Harris novels on which this is based - which Ball adapted - had a little more subtlety or human interest, but this all kind of feels like a hard-core mash-up of "The Last Picture Show," "Cavemen" and almost anything Anne Rice put her name on. Ball (of course) has a grand sense of the macabre, but the macabre here is (often) gross, venal, prurient and just plain disgusting.

GRADE D