I assume this show is going to be on HBO, because in an early scene, one of the televisions appears to be showing "Real time with Bill Maher" (an HBO product) in which Bill is talking to a vampire about their history of exploiting humans for their own needs. There’s also boobs and f-bombs, so it’s certainly not going to be on network TV.

The title of the show is also the name of a brand of synthetic blood, the invention of which has encouraged the vampire race to "come out of the coffin," (as they say on the show) and live among humans openly. Since vampires now have a safe product to consume, they no longer have to feed on the humans.

Vampirism is treated by the writers as both a minority race and an alternate lifestyle. Likewise, the fear of vampires is treated as something akin to both racism and homophobia. They’ve yet to show if the tales about evil vampires are misleading the way gangster rap culture is misleading, nor have they shown whether or not most drinking of humans has been done consensually. So I don’t know (within the show’s setting) if the fear of vampirism is truly analagous to fear of gays and other skin colors.

The two main characters appear to be Sooky the mind-reader (played by Anna Paquin) and Bill the vampire. On Bill’s first night in Sooky’s small Louisiana town, he’s drawn away from a diner by two people who plan to subdue him and drain his blood, because vampire blood (also known as v-juice) fetches quite a high price in the illegal drug trade. Sooky catches on to the plan, and rescues him.

Eh. Some other stuff happens.

So far, this show looks like a soap opera with vampires, f-bombs, and boobs (but not Anna’s….yet). I’m interested in seeing if the vampires’ reputation is deserved or not. I’m also interested in seeing Anna’s boobs. However, True Blood hasn’t made me say "wow" yet.

Well, the first episode did end with something of a cliffhanger, but I’m not going to elaborate.