Trueblood on HBO

Vampires have often been a favorite subject for the cinematic arts. Their ghastly, yet suavely preternatural demeanor and lust for our red, liquid human blood makes them the perfect candidates for an elegantly gruesome HD feature length movie presentation. The recent success of movies like Twilight and Underworld, coupled with earlier big screen adaptations of Bram Stoker's Dracula and numerous other offshoots including Anne Rice's fabulous brooding brood of vamps, depicted so memorably by uber-super-stars Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, have ensured that vampires have and will continue to haunt the collective imagination. But vampires aren't made only for the silver screen. They've migrated to the ubiquitous TV tube.

Case in point, the HBO series True Blood, which you can catch weekly courtesy of a satellite TV subscription (if you don't have satellite TV yet, what are you waiting for?). True Blood is based on the Sookie Stackhouse series penned by Southern author Charlaine Harris. The books detail the life of Sookie, not a vampire, but a telepathic bar maid who false in love with a fang toothed undead. Sookie inhabits the fictional town of Le Bon Temps, Louisiana. The good times aren't what you'd expect them to be. The town is populated by all sorts of ghouls and goblins and witches and fairies and vampires of course. The novels are romantic in nature: supernatural love that blows across an otherwise normal small town. The books have led the way to a TV series, created by Alan Ball, the genius behind Six Feet Under (another satellite TV gem). It takes Harris' inventions, such as synthetic blood (a Japanese invention as it were) that allows vamps to hang out in the open just like real humans, and a bar called Fangstasia which draws a camp of humans who like to get it on with the undead.

True Blood, the first season, follows the plot of Dead Until Dark, the original book in the Sookie Stackhouse series. The series is sexy, scary and funny, a must see in HD. As a romance, there's plenty of vampire sex, especially between Sookie, played by Anna Paquin who has moved on from her childish Piano days in dramatic fashion, and Bill Compton played by Stephen Moyer. But the series isn't purely insipid, sappy, romance-there's a lot of verve and wit in there too.

Although Sookie can read minds, she cannot read the mind of her 173 year old lover. He was a civil war vet. Modern vampires, he tells the young telepath, are actually top trend setters and they often appear on network TV talk shows.

The show is cleverly put together. The backwoods Louisiana setting is colorful, even more so with its preternatural population. The good looking inhabitants and folksy town demand HD. Each episode ends in a cliff hanger and there are plenty of murders to wonder at-the odd thing is that vampires aren't always the murderers, they've actually integrated with society, to a point. The show has garnered a few awards, including a coveted Golden Globe.

Check your satellite TV listings for show times. And remember this is for adults only.