Vampire Hookers

The vampires of "True Blood," a television series on HBO, have "out of the coffin," as one woman says, thanks to a Japanese substitute that supposedly satisfies their desire for coolness. They are looking acceptance and transition to the Vampire Rights Amendment in a society that is still prejudiced against the living mortal, undead.

"True Blood" is based on the Southern Vampire Mysteries, a series of fantasy novels by Charlaine Harris that revolve around Sookie Stackhouse, a waitress at a local bar who solves murders while playing hard to bite with a large beautiful vampire .

Sookie, played with a sharp cut Holly Hunter by Anna Paquin, is perky, blond and psychic - she can read people's thoughts. Sookie calls her gift of a handicap, "the one who left something of a recluse, and a virgin. She lives with Dotty, doting grandmother, Adele (Lois Smith), and goes out with her best friend, a feisty black woman named Tara (Rutina Wesley) who can not hold his tongue, or employment, and also something of a loner.

One of the most interesting and less stereotypical characters is Tara's cousin Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis), a cook at Merlotte minute per day, a gay prostitute and drug dealer by night.

When a large and beautiful pale stranger named Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) comes Merlotte's, Sookie knows at once that he is a vampire, the first to come forward in tiny Bon Temps. She is tickled, not fearful - nothing exciting ever happens in her small redneck community, and she longs for romance. Sookie finds him irresistibly attractive, in part because it is the first man she ever met whose mind she can not read.

Sex is for everyone else mind, and it takes all of Sookie concentration not to hear his friends and neighbors crudest fantasies and lascivious thoughts. Vampires are predators, but they are also prey: it turns out that in small quantities, vampire blood has an aphrodisiac effect on humans, and there is a flourishing illegal trade in V vampire blood.

Strapping Sookie, idiot brother Jason (Ryan Kwanten), is the town's Casanova, but unfortunately for him, some of the women he sleeps with turn up dead. This is an obvious suspect, but many people in town prefer to blame vampires for the crimes. Sookie boss Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammel), believes in segregation for the undead.

When Sookie accuses him of seeking a return to the era of "separate but equal," Sam says he does not care about equality. "Give them more than we had," he said, "as long as everything is separate."