Last night I devoted four hours to screening True Blood, HBO's latest original series which pairs up (at 9p.) with Entourage (at 10p.) this coming Sunday, September 7. True Blood is produced by Alan Ball and the drama is based on Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampires Mysteries series, "Dead Until Dark."
This is a series I really wanted to like. I was, excuse the pun, dying to like it. I doggedly watched all four hours, hoping for a shift in my thinking. (There's one more hour to go, sitting in the DVD player.) Alas, however, True Blood isn't up to producer Ball's high standards, much less HBO's.
Each episode of True Blood begins exactly where the previous episode left off. But as the fourth episode was about to roll (we watched them back-to-back), my daughter intoned in her best announcer voice, "Previously. On True Blood. Short skirt. Tight tank top. Cliched romance, and two redeeming characters."
The characterizations are paper-thin. The series is set in Bon Temps, Louisiana, a fictional town somewhere near Shreveport where, apparently, the women are flirty sluts, the men are sweaty rednecks, and the gays are flaming, drug dealing prostitutes. If this was an SNL skit or a 30 Rock episode it might be funny. But it's not, and if True Blood is satire, you could have fooled me.
Anna Paquin is Sookie, a telepathic bar maid. She flounces around in exceedingly short dresses and shorts, and tight tank tops. In four episodes, there is only one instance (I can recall) in which the hem of Sookie's outfit went much past her fanny. Correcting their oversight of dressing Ms. Paquin somewhat tastefully (in a halter dress), wardrobe added a push-up bra. It's all so excessive, it's cheesy.
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