TV shows that rocked my world: True Blood

Why is it we love the TV shows we love? Is it the actors/actresses we secretly fantasise about? Is it the storyline? Is it because it’s so well written that it makes us examine our own lives? Maybe. But the reason True Blood continues to rock my world, is the escape.

I wasn’t watching True Blood from the time debuted HBO in the US in 2008 - and I hadn’t even discovered the books yet. But my sister was already obsessed with the books and was begging me to buy Season One on DVD, as soon as it was released. I never got around to it (I kick myself now – I could have been drooling over Eric the vampire so much sooner!). So she bought it for me for my birthday; she knew I would love it. At the time, I had a lot of stress in my life and I was commuting to work for more than an hour morning and night every day. So I watched True Blood on the train, at home, anywhere I could. True Blood was my escape; the gothic southern imagery, the haunting original score, the juxtaposition of religion and lawlessness, the witty, sharp and sometimes hilarious one liners.


Created by Alan Ball, the genius who brought us Six Feet Under and wrote American Beauty, True Blood is an addictive, engrossing vampire saga, based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels by American author Charlaine Harris. The series centres on Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic waitress living in the small town of Bon Temps, Louisiana, struggling with her unusual ‘gift’ for hearing people’s thoughts. Life is relatively quiet until she meets and falls in love with local vampire Bill Compton. True Blood’s setting is modern day with a difference. A world where vampires have ‘come out of the coffin’, that is, revealed themselves to the world in a simultaneous and systematic revelation. As a result, vampires are largely treated as the ‘new’ second class citizens of the Deep South, and are fighting for the right to legally own assets and marry.

THAT Rolling Stone cover

On one hand, you can’t get much further from reality than a world where vampires live side by side with humans, not to mention the supernaturals which still live in secret; the werewolves, shape shifters and fairies.


But on the other, True Blood has smatterings of normalcy amongst the fantasy, times when we can identify with the characters. Sookie Stackhouse, the telepathic waitress, who apart from her special talent, led a simple yet isolated life before she met her lover, Bill. It’s easy to identify with the isolation Sookie feels as a ‘local freak’ with her telepathic skills. She represents anyone who’s ever felt like an outsider, like they didn’t fit in. And I’d challenge the most reluctant vampire fan not to feel just a bit of empathy for the internal struggle Bill experiences in Season One, to maintain his human qualities of love, empathy and compassion, whilst fighting his urge to hunt and drink human blood (including Sookie’s). Or Bill’s progeny child-vamp Jessica, who will remain 16 forever, experiencing the typical angst of a teenager, losing her virginity, dating – and some not so typical, like accidently killing her dinner in Season Three and struggling to control her young, new-vampire urges.


So what makes True Blood so additive? Millions of people round the world are die-hard fans (or Truebies). The appeal this TV show makes to the vampire sub-culture and pop culture phenomenon that is the vampire genre was cleverly recognised by Allan Ball back in 2007, when the show’s pilot was shot. For me it’s the fantasy combined with super cool scripting and killer one liners from Sookie like “Bill, you were just licking blood out of my head, it don't think it gets much more personal than that” or from Lafayette Reynolds “That boy is sex on a stick. I don't give a good damn how stuck up he is” or “Conscience off. D*ck on”.

Not to mention the super-sexy cast (hello, Rolling Stone Magazine cover??). They have some responsibility for the addictive nature of this show. Generally, the show has been cast really well, keeping some homage to the book series characters. Two of the most central, Sookie and Bill, (Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer) are actually now married in real life, after meeting on set. A dream for the HBO marketing department I’m sure. But the chemistry in their very first scenes together practically oozes out from the TV screen. Sookie’s later chemistry with thousand year old vampire (and sex on legs) Eric, keeps things just as steamy.

The cast of True Blood - Season 3

Yes, I will admit the acting in True Blood is not always the best acting you’ve ever seen (although Paquin is pretty damn good), but to the thousands of Truebies around the world, that doesn’t matter. This show was never intended to be taken too seriously or pretended to be anything other than pop culture goodness. Creator Allan Ball has never purported it to be anything else. The same can pretty much be said for Charlaine Harris’ books. This doesn’t take away from their appeal and brilliance.


There’s an ever increasing debate between fans on the book series’ storylines and the tendency for the TV show to totally abandon them or twist them out of order. And as the recent Season Three finale has shown us, the show continues to jump around, basing entire seasons only loosely on storylines from the imagination of Charlaine Harris. For me, I love the books and I love the show. The show is like a new tangent of Sookie’s story and I find both the book storylines and the TV storylines as equally addictive. I think Allan Ball has made a clever decision to put his own ingenious stamp on True Blood, making it into an animal all of its own.

For me, my ultimate favourite episode is the very first one. It’s the beginning of an incredible journey. The electric chemistry between dangerous and brooding vampire (Bill), when he first lays his eyes on an outcast, oddball, lonely girl (Sookie) still gives me chills. I’ve watched it several times – and could watch it a thousand more. I can’t thank my sister enough. May True Blood never die ‘The True Death’.

TV shows that rocked my world: Deadwood

Al and Bullock get serious at the Gem

I’m fairly certain that if it wasn’t for a subscription TV channel, I would have never given Deadwood past its first episode. In fact, I think it’s fairly safe to say that there’s never been anything quite like Deadwood.

Created by David Milch and running just 3 seasons (from 2004 – 2006), Deadwood is set in the 1870s in South Dakota, before (and after) the area’s annexation by the Dakota Territory. It shows the town’s growth from camp to town, covering broad themes like law and order, government and politics, business, and power. A huge ensemble cast breathes life into the grime and grit of the camp, with Timothy Olyphant’s Sherriff Seth Bullock and Ian McShane’s saloon owner Al Swearengen leading a charge of wonderful performances by terrific character actors. Deadwood is populated by true historical figures, including Bullock and Swearengen, Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, Wyatt Earp, Charlie Utter, and George Hearst. The historical truth of these characters is served up by Milch with a healthy dose of artistic license. And here is where Deadwood’s genius lies.

Sol and Trixie

 I had the chance to see Deadwood, all three seasons, back to back on Australian pay TV channel Showcase. Deadwood was on each weeknight at 7.30, and when the advertisements came to my attention, I was reminded it was one of those shows I’d always “meant” to see. You know the ones, we all have them, but late-night TV scheduling, or the  failure of commercial networks to air the great HBO shows at all, conspire against us. The advent of TV-on-DVD has certainly helped with series’ many of us would have otherwise missed out on. Deadwood on each weeknight was as good as a DVD for me! So I settled in for the first episode… and couldn’t understand a word they were saying. These people were speaking in some bizarre bastardisation of Shakespeare, with sentences and words inverting and swirling in on themselves, making a kind of peculiar poetry from phrases sometimes so vulgar I couldn’t believe my ears. The cursing and swearing was confronting (despite my knowledge of Deadwood’s reputation for foul language), but in the setting, made a sort of perfect sense as part of the lawlessness of the show. I’ve since read that Milch intended for his cast to use the curse words of the time, but they seemed to our modern ears to be more blasphemous than anything, and so the decision was made to give the words their full modern impact. And thus, C-bombs and F-bombs scatter the script like raindrops. And so it wasn’t the language in that sense that confused me. The show was going to take some getting used to, and I vowed to keep at it. Boy, am I glad I did.

The men of Deadwood

Deadwood fast became my favourite TV show. It is ugly, grimy, and offensive. The depth and smell of the place almost reeks from the screen. The characters are, with a few exceptions, deceitful, selfish, anarchistic, and so very human. The storyline is compelling and sometimes shocking. Death, mud, gunshots, scheming, drinking, and whoring are relentless. Deadwood has perhaps 40 speaking characters, and only about 5 of them are women. Two of those women are prostitutes. The acting is, almost without exception, first-rate. Milch has trusted his actors to deliver his precious and wholly original script, a script that often brought me to tears. The trick, I learnt after that first episode, is to watch with subtitles. To truly appreciate and love Deadwood is to truly appreciate and love language. For as gritty and foul as that language may be, it is also poetry in motion. The machinations of the script have been written like a sort of concerto. No television program, before or since, has had such an impact on me. I bought the DVDs, and have watched them countless times since. I’ve memorised sections of script and my favourite quotes, like I’d do with Tennyson or Dickinson.

Jane and Charlie. Probably thinking
about Joanie.

It’s not just the beauty of the screenplay, but the fantastic performances that sell you on Deadwood. A cast of characters to break your heart. Such perfect moments from such perfect actors: Robin Weigert’s drunken and kind-hearted Calamity Jane. Brad Dourif’s Doc Cochran, doing what he can under extreme circumstances. The burgeoning relationship between John Hawkes’ Sol Star and Paula Malcomson’s Trixie. The not-so-subtle rivalry between Al’s go-to men, W. Earl Brown’s Dan Dority and Titus Welliver’s Silas Adams. The scenes between the reformed madam, Kim Dickens’ Joanie, and the compassionate Charlie Utter, played by Dayton Callie, he boyishly in love with her, she so tentatively branching out on her own. The moments as Molly Parker’s Alma Garret makes critical choices like starting her bank, for the good of the camp, only to come up against the pure evil of Gerald McRaney’s George Hearst. The pathetic worm-like moments of attempted scheming from William Sanderson’s E. B. Farnham. It’s the people that make the town, and Milch knows it.

I’m so glad I gave Deadwood a chance. Re-watching offers even more rewards, as subplots and line readings you may have missed the first time around suddenly come into focus. In the end though it’s this simple scene, featuring a pep talk the incomparable McShane's Al gives newspaperman Merrick after Merrick's been beaten, that is my favourite of all 3 Deadwood seasons. It still brings a tear to my eye. “Pain or damage don’t end the world. Or despair, or fucking beatings..” Sublime. Comments below!