A scene from True Blood, HBO's silly but irresistible vampire soap opera. (HBO/Movie Central/The Movie Network)

True Blood is HBO’s silliest, most sensational TV drama to date. I should know — I haven’t missed an episode of the campy vampire drama since it first aired last fall. So what’s the appeal? I’m afraid to admit it may just be simple excess: all that gratuitous sex and violence. That, and the show’s rockabilly theme song (Bad Things by Jace Everett), has me hooked.

The parallels between “vampire rights” and the enduring battle for gay rights in the U.S. are strong, but sex, not politics, is True Blood’s main plot thrust.

Now in the thick of its second season on HBO Canada, True Blood is but one more glossy offering to the cult of the vampire, which, with the recent and ubiquitous success of the Twilight series (books, movies, Robert Pattinson hysteria), appears to be accepting new recruits daily.

Based on the popular “Southern Vampire” novels of U.S. writer Charlaine Harris, True Blood was adapted for TV by Alan Ball, creator of the critically acclaimed Six Feet Under, which ran for six seasons on HBO. But don’t go expecting any angsty family drama just because Ball’s attached. True Blood’s vampires and human beings are having way more fun than the Fishers, Six Feet Under’s death-haunted family of morticians, ever did.

Ball, an Academy Award-winning screenwriter, has referred to True Blood as “popcorn for smart people,” which, I assume, is another way of saying it’s a guilty pleasure. The vampire vein may be a little tapped out in terms of creativity, but True Blood’s conceit does add something new to the bloodsucker mythology. In the world of the show, the Japanese have created a synthetic blood product – think POM Juice plus plasma! – called Tru Blood. The handy bottled beverage gives vampires an economical and socially responsible alternative to hunting humans in order to survive.

As a result, vampires walk freely (though not peacefully) among regular folks. Set in present-day Louisiana, True Blood’s vampires date, frequent cheesy theme bars (“Fangtasia” is their popular meat market) and argue with their neighbours. They’re almost normal. But no one is really normal in Bon Temps, Louisiana, the fictional setting for the show. The southern backwater is disproportionately populated with supernatural oddballs: shape shifters, werewolves, fundamentalist Christians and some new creature with talons that appears to be a maenad (look it up).

Anna Paquin stars as Sookie Stackhouse in True Blood. (HBO/Movie Central/The Movie Network)

At the show’s centre is sultry, intuitive Sookie Stackhouse, played by Anna Paquin. A waitress at Bon Temps’ local bar, Sookie is able to hear other people’s thoughts (a gift that truly is as bad as it sounds). Sookie also happens to be in love with a nearly 200-year-old vampire hunk named Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer). Their relationship accounts for much of the show’s drama, not to mention many of the show’s Red Shoe Diaries-inspired love scenes. (If these extended groanfests don’t make you blush, you’ve been watching too much cable TV.)

Not everyone in Bon Temps approves of humans dating vampires, and season one dealt mainly with Sookie and Bill’s growing attraction and subsequent struggle to be together. Vampires don’t have it easy in Bon Temps. Not surprisingly, many humans fear them. But even more seem to hate them violently, and the show’s writers make a lot of hay out of the political significance of that irrational fear. The parallels between “vampire rights,” a phrase oft-repeated on the show, and the enduring battle for gay rights in the U.S. has been noted by many critics.

In season two, that comparison heats up with the increased presence of the radical religious group The Fellowship of the Sun. A vamp-hating Christian fundamentalist group, the Fellowship has formed a militia, and a war between them and the vampires is brewing. That said, I’m not convinced of the show’s commitment to exploring that metaphor too deeply – or any political agenda for that matter. While you would have to be dense not to get the comparison – the writing here ain’t subtle, folks – the show seems less interested in Proposition 8 than in fabricating elaborate sex scenes, indulging in orgiastic fantasies and showcasing actor Ryan Kwanten’s impressive abs. Sex, not politics, is True Blood’s main plot thrust, so to speak. (Want to watch a drama with a genuine political conscience? See all five seasons of David Simon’s The Wire.)

However, sex and a great looking cast is selling for HBO: True Blood is being credited with re-energizing the cable network, garnering HBO some of its best ratings since The Sopranos finale in 2007.

As a species of pure TV fantasy, True Blood is pretty good. But held to the standard of an HBO series, a pretty impressive back catalogue that includes The Sopranos and The Wire, it’s barely skating by with a passing grade. Then again, school’s out and summer TV shouldn’t feel like homework.

True Blood airs Sundays on HBO Canada.

Flannery Dean is a writer based in Toronto.