Frances Grant: Something to get your teeth into

Whe are appetites so keen right now for revamping the old vampire myths? Perhaps there's a special resonance with the times, as we watch the world economy lying deathly pale after having had its lifeblood so suddenly drained away.

We have hit teen blood-sucker Twilight making a splash at the movies and, as a reviewer of young adult fiction, I can attest to a stream of offerings in the vampire-romance genre coming across my desk.

And now comes the HBO telly drama True Blood (Prime, Wednesdays, 9.30pm), an adaptation of Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels by none other than the illustrious and highly original talent Alan Ball (creator of Six Feet Under, and Oscar winner for American Beauty).

True Blood arrives here with its credentials well established; a second series commissioned after just one episode; and a best actress Golden Globe for its Kiwi lead, Anna Paquin, who really does dominate the show.

Ball certainly can take a script and run with it; so what kind of spin does True Blood put on the hoary old story of the feisty babe who's a sucker for a bat man?

It imagines a world where, thanks to the invention of synthetic blood, vampires are coming out of the closet and claiming their rights - only at night, of course - to live free from human discrimination and intimidation. They even have an attractive, sober-suited woman fronting their cause who, rather than fanged and blood-stained, looks reassuringly like a "moms for teen sexual abstinence" campaigner.

Add a strong helping of southern American gothic, with its setting of a Louisiana backwater town where intrigue and prejudices breed like mosquitoes in the bayou. Inject with humour - roadside signs proclaim "God hates fangs" and women who sleep with vampires are dubbed "fang-bangers" - and a bit of graphic sex, although for sexual out-there-ness it's no match for the likes of Californication.

A bright light in this slough of degeneracy and despond is Paquin's perky, wholesome character Sookie Stackhouse, with her comic-book name, job (waitress in a bar), super powers (she can read minds) and home address (grandmother's house in the woods).

There's the stock character in Sookie's best mate, sassy black woman Tara, who makes such a sport of luring po' white folks into the sin of racism, she should turn professional.

Sookie's boss is in love with her; Tara is in love with Sookie's brother Jason; Jason, a self-centred "horn dog", is in love with himself; and Sookie is suddenly in love with the 173-year-old vampire who has decided to make the bar his local for a friendly pint of fake blood after a hard day in the coffin.

From just one episode, it is evident Paquin has lost none of that ability to light up the screen that saw her win her premature Oscar. Her face is mesmerising, her acting talents convincing and her southern accent almost credible.

As for the show, in true Ball style, it has the kind of opening credits you can only hope it lives up to and a murder plot that hooks you right in.

There are enough twists to satisfyingly complicate matters, such as a new human addiction to the erotic powers of vampire blood and the rise of a nasty set of drug-dealing individuals known as vampire drainers. There is enough humour to leaven the plot, as Sookie's gran wonders whether the vampire Bill would like to come and share his eye-witness accounts with her Civil War history group. And its fine beginning leaves the impression there are many

rich veins yet to tap.