True Blood – HBO’s saving grace?

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Let’s face it.  HBO’s series have gone to pot since the days when Sex and the City, The Sopranos, and Six Feet Under all called the premium cable channel home.  There were series that shot for greatness, like Rome or Carnivale, but the network’s run in the early 2000s is unparalleled.  What’s a pay cable channel to do?

How about call in the guy who created one of those three great series and create a dramedy that can compete with the smut Showtime is churning out.  

Enter Alan Ball (American Beauty, Six Feet Under), the mastermind behind HBO’s new series True Blood. 

Now, let’s just forget how this idea turned out the first time around with that Michael Patrick King series, The Comeback. In terms of artistry, there’s really no comparing King and Ball. That may be why True Blood is getting a viral campaign like nothing we’ve ever seen from HBO.

The show, based on Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire novels, has been in development long enough for Ball to write and direct the feature Towelhead before getting True Blood onto your TV set.  You may have seen an ad in the a recent EW like this:

The ad prompts you to visit trubeverage.com, one of the two main viral sites.  The other site, bloodcopy.com, has great webisopdic news magazine-style videos giving you all the back story you need going into the series premiere.  Vampires now have Japanese-manufactured blood substitute.  They can come out of the coffin and hang with the humans.  Most vampires like the idea. Others go organic. 

True Blood‘s faux-ad campaign isn’t the different from the funeral home product commercials that popped up in the pilot of Ball’s Six Feet Under.  Ball and his creative team have a knack for something like this.  The question is how do you go from making a series about the guys who stuff people into coffins to one about the people who sleep in them.  Ball’s style certainly worked in his family dramas.  Thankfully, this vampire series looks heavy of Ball’s signature sex and satire. 

True Blood premieres Sunday, Sept. 7 on HBO

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