True Blood, the upcoming series by Alan Ball (of American Beauty and Six Feet Under fame) will be hitting HBO in September, and may or may not be widely available on your favorite torrent site in what appears to be an intentional leak to build buzz for the project.
The show is based in the Southern Gothic with Vampires Universe created by mystery novelist Charlaine Harris.
Anna Paquin is a fairly unique actress, and she's playing a unique role as Sookie Stackhouse, at least it would be unique if we hadn't seen the sassy, yet repressed, too smart for her small town, Southern barmaid a million times before. There's the psychic twist to this one, but that's also not out of the ordinary in Southern Gothic tales.
I think they're aiming for a lighter tone than they achieve, and the usual gut-wrenching violent turn that Ball is fond of is present here, too, so I suspect if this gets a longer run the tone will get more violent, more introspective, less fun, with plenty of anti-Southerner bigotry thrown in for good measure (Ball can't help himself it seems, I think Ball was attracted to the source material not cause he likes these people, but because he hates them, which isn't a good place to start from).
The other thing I couldn't possibly have seen since I'm not in the UK is the first episode of Bonekickers, the new Indiana Jones meets CSI series from BBC. All you really need to know about this one is that there is a beheading in the first episode (no video, just a news article on the controversy), shown on screen, and it invovles a muslim (as the victim, not perpetrator). Anti-christian hokum at its DaVinci Codey-ist (involving a neo-Templar group and a dig of an apparent Saracens on Templar attack in Bath, England), paid for by a licence fee. Got to love Britain, while it lasts. The show itself is silly fun if you can get past the gut-wrenchingly idiotic politics of it all. I suspect this will never see the light of day in the United States, and as the BBC is raping the British public, seems only fair to steal some of their product (especially since that product will never be shown here)
Judging from the previews it gets worse next week (something about a black candidate for U.S. President and a racist plot against him, how this ties in with an archaeological dig in the UK, I'm not sure, but given they had the "true cross", Templars and apparent Saracens in Bath in the first episode, anything is possible . . .)
(after showing how racist and evil white Christians are in England, I think they felt the need in the second episode to show how the really white and really racist Americans perfected their manifestations of hatred. Hopefully I'm wrong, but given the BBC's track record, I doubt I'm exaggerating in the least)
UPDATE:
Again, not admitting that I've seen the leaked pilot of True Blood, but I see that the 'sassy black friend' (and given the way the role was played, there is really no other fitting descriptor for he part) has been recast (it was Brook Kerr in the leaked version, and she's written and played in stereotype overdrive mode), and hopefully reworked a lot, cause Tara Thornton was the clunkiest bit in a clunky pilot.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment