I've always had a thing for vampire films. From the age of 11 I was allowed to stay up late and watch Hammer's brilliant Dracula
There's something about vampire mythology that hits the spot in a way that werewolves, zombies and all those other members of the supernatural bestiary just don't. And let's be honest, it's the sex.
So when I heard Six Feet Under
In anyone else's hands, this could have been so bad, but with Ball, you know you're getting quality. It's yet another modern televisual classic from the HBO stable. They truly do spoil us.
True Blood
And at the heart of this social tinderbox is the cross-the-tracks love affair between waitress Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) and vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer).
But even the humans have their dark secrets. One of the characters is a shapeshifter, and heroine Sookie is telepathic, which is why she falls for vampire Bill: he's the only man whose thoughts she can't read. And that's before we get into the whole illicit trade in vampire blood, which humans can get incredibly high on, and the lengths to which some of them will go to get it.
If all vampire stories are about 'surrogate sexual intercourse', then True Blood
Unusually for a modern TV series it opts for powerful serial-like cliffhanger endings, which just goes to show that when you think a TV drama tradition is long dead, up it pops again all alive and in your face.
A bit like... well, you know.
True Blood