Alan Ball bites into vampire myth in 'True Blood'

All right, I know, for a certain element of the readership the worst sentence they can imagine coming from Your Friendly Neighborhood TV Critic is: "Have I got a great new vampire series for you!"

Yet there's a reason vampire stories have survived and thrived - from Bram Stoker's original "Dracula" novel through countless horror movies to "Dark Shadows," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and the "Twilight" books, soon to become major motion pictures as well.

And that reason is that the simplicity of the vampire myth lends itself to dramatic storytelling by clarifying the conflict in terms of good and evil without minimizing the complexities. It doesn't hurt that vampires are also cool and sexy - and dead.

It turns out to be just the genre for Alan Ball, who has already worked with the dead and the undead in HBO's mortuary series, "Six Feet Under."

That show, for all its promise, frequently found Ball losing focus as creator and guiding force. It could be terrific one season, maddeningly uneven the next.

By contrast, his new "True Blood," based on the novels of Charlaine Harris and debuting at 8 p.m. Sunday on HBO, comes on direct, playful and compelling with the acceptance of a simple premise: The development of synthetic bottled blood has allowed vampires to come out of the shadows and try to gain acceptance in society at large.

I'm not promising that Ball won't find a way to fumble this one as well from time to time, but it has a cast of well-defined characters and a metaphoric approach that sure makes it look as if, yes, it could live forever - if you call that living.

Talk about those back from the dead: Anna Paquin stars as Sookie Stackhouse, a waitress at Merlotte's roadhouse in backwoods Louisiana.

Paquin has been trying for years to get out from under the Oscar she won as a child for "The Piano," but most recently was still filling bit parts in the "X-Men" films.

Here, however, she emerges as fully adult and a fully rounded character, someone with powers of her own who falls under the influence of a vampire.

Sookie is telepathic and can hear the thoughts of those around her, which gives her an empathetic quality similar to the angels hovering over Wim Wenders' "Wings of Desire" as she tends to her customers. But she immediately falls under the sway of the one person to walk into the roadhouse whose thoughts she can't hear: Stephen Moyer's 173-year-old vampire, Bill.

The pilot, written and directed by Ball, has a clever way of undercutting vampire stereotypes. When Bill introduces himself, Sookie laughs.

"Bill?" she says. "I thought it might be Antoine or Basil or Longford or something."

One thing about vampires hasn't changed, however: Even as they take their first tentative steps into the mainstream (not unlike the frequently misunderstood "X-Men," come to think of it), they remain fantasy objects for those drawn to the edge with a death wish, much as they are in vampire fiction. They're objects of desire to "fang bangers," eager to "make it" with the renowned lusty abandon of the undead, at the same time they have to fend off "vein drainers," who seek out vampires' blood for its properties of rehabilitation and vitality.

Make no mistake: With material like this to drawn on, Ball makes full use of the liberties of premium cable. Yet dig the way he also creates his own imaginary lingo around the vamps, Aware One, and the way he plucks readily identifiable characters from Harris' books. Rutina Wesley is Tara, Sookie's confrontational black best friend, railing against whites - and against her own mother for naming her after a plantation. Sam Trammell is Sam, the roadhouse owner, who pines for Sookie and, like many others, has his doubts about whether vamps will be satisfied on a diet of Tru Blood.

"Are you ready to pass up all your favorite foods and spend the rest of your life drinking SlimFast?" He wonders aloud.

Nelsan Ellis is the provocative gay chef, Lafayette, and Ryan Kwanten is Sookie's wayward Lothario brother, Jason.

Yet there's no denying the primary focus is on Sookie and Bill as they play out their mutual attraction and uneasy relationship.

"Vampires often turn on those who trust them," he warns. "We don't have human values."

"Well, humans turn on those who trust them, too," Sookie replies.

True enough. Scenes like that link "True Blood" to "Buffy" and the best vampire tales in the way they make all-too-astute points about real life. So trust Ball to keep a fine sense of control over the powers he calls forth this time - at your own risk of blood TV addiction.