True Blood

[gt3]

True Blood

diabloingles, I've kinda lost track! The last series I watched was the one where
************************SPOILERS****************** ******

Sukie is attacked by a strange creature in the wood, leaving its nail embedded in her and Jason joins the Christians.

[diabloinglés]

True Blood

Yep, that's season 2.
Not sure season 3 is on UK TV at the moment, but I do recommend watching it online.
It's all there to catch up on.
There was no episode this week for some reason, episode 12 due next Sunday night, usually available Monday morning UK time.

[gt3]

True Blood

Cheers diabloingles.

[gt3]

True Blood

Woo hoo!!!! Season 3 has started...and how!

[Mitch]

True Blood

Is it on Sky already? What night?

[gt3]

True Blood

FX Friday and Sunday night catch up.

[Mitch]

True Blood

Oh, get in! Cheers.

This is one of those times when you press that green 'series link' button on Sky+ that feels very exciting...

[imp]

True Blood

This is a neglected thread, unless you've been discussing it on 'Current Watching' - a thread concept of which I disapprove.

Anyway, the family just watched the whole of series 5 over three nights (we're old school - we watch DVD boxed sets), and we all still love it, though as much for the witty one-liners as all the wild plot strands. SPOILER The Pam-Tara pairing was a stroke of genius. Though I did remark to frau imp that every series we watch tends to be about sex, drugs and killing. Not that there's anything wrong with (watching) that, but series 4 of Downton Abbey might be a welcome breather. Or maybe we're too far gone and we'll start yelling at the characters to loosen up and fuck each other hard, and just get monged off their tits for once.

[dalliance]

True Blood

I got as far as early Season 4 before my interest waned. I probably stuck with it as long as I did for its sharp dialogue and fantastic production values, but by christ did it get roaringly and annoyingly silly after a while.

[Amor de Cosmos]

True Blood

Yeah. Series 2 was the zenith, and while still watchable, the show's been treading water since then. It might be my imagination but Sookie appears to have aged a good deal since the first series. Not surprising I suppose, given what the poor dear's had to go through.

[G-Man]

True Blood

It did get a bit silly, though the premise of the show does suggest that you suspend your disbelief completely. It's not quite like the almost equally Homeland.

I will probably stick by it, but more through a sense of duty than joyful anticipation.

[imp]

True Blood

Indeed, a series about vampires, fairies, shapeshifters, witches and wolf-people straining credibility, who'd have thought it? I think that in series 5 they actually upped their game, and that it was one of the best yet for pace - we've done the atmospheric night-time lingering about the swampy south by now. SPOILERS FOR SERIES 5 There was a feeling of the world beyond again, like they had at the start, with all the news reports of the burning True Blood factories, and the AVL media appearances, and re-floating of the political parallels between vampires and still not fully accepted ethnic or sexual minorities. And it's definitely not lost any of its wit, which is more than enough to pull you through any issues you might have with a lack of realism... I got a bit bored with the recurring scenes in the claustrophobic Authority HQ, but they did at least lead to a gratifyingly tense and bloody climax.

[Amor de Cosmos]

True Blood

I think that in series 5 they actually upped their game, and that it was one of the best yet for pace - we've done the atmospheric night-time lingering about the swampy south by now.

I've never understood the contemporary obsession with pace in film/TV. It's like fans pleading for more "passion" in English football, as if it was a quality that transcended talent, organization and other concrete abilities.

I liked the laid-backness of the early seasons. If anything I wished they'd geared things back a bit more. The show almost lost me when our vampire heroes went all Magnificent Seven (or Four) with Very Big Guns and blew up that building real good (series three?) It did improve some last season, but I'm not optimistic long-term. I'm kind of expecting it to fade away like Dexter.

[imp]

True Blood

I don't completely disagree - I loved the lowly lit forest scenes with crickets chirping, and the sense of the unspeakable just beyond in the swamp, but I think they were right to outgrow it. I mean, there's a Peter Matthiesen trilogy, 'Shadow Country', with 890 pages of that if you like. And I do - it's one of my all-time favourite works of fiction.

[Amor de Cosmos]

True Blood

Without doubt it had to evolve. I think one of the biggest challenges for long-form TV is how that happens.

Some series have it predetermined to an extent — with Mad Men its chronology, Game of Thrones, a pre-existing story cycle. This helps a good deal. True Blood, and Dexter, are at a disadvantage because their fundamental premise is formulaic. Every season requires a new supernatural being, or serial killer. For the first couple of series it's a hoot. But after three or four, it becomes repetitive for audiences, and a dramatic millstone for writers.

In some respects the most similar — from a subject/genre perspective — long-form series to True Blood was the short-lived Carnivale. It was pulled after two seasons so comparisons are a bit unfair (but I'll do it anyway.) Both started out strong on atmosphere, with a similar sense of ominous creepiness, but Carnivale wasn't as structurally rigid. When bad things happened it was with the sense of an endless, and unknown, poison onion being unpeeled. How it would've developed there's no way of knowing, but there's no evidence that routine gory violence and eye candy (which is where True Blood is at now) would have been required to hold viewers' attention.