Television: Vampire mysteries inspire HBO series

Death becomes Alan Ball. His last series, "Six Feet Under," dealt with a family of morticians dedicated to burying corpses and their feelings. His Oscar-winning script for 1999's "American Beauty" introduced characters one rainy day away from a mass suicide pact.

"After peering into the abyss and contemplating life in the presence of mortality, I felt like doing something else," Ball said.

For others, that might mean creating a musical about happy-go-lucky beavers that build a magic dam. But the 51-year-old playwright and director can't help but keep one foot in the grave.

"True Blood," his new HBO series, revolves around the living dead -- vampires -- and their insatiable need for both attention and human juice.

Anna Paquin, who copped an Oscar for "The Piano," plays Sookie Stackhouse, a clairvoyant waitress at a rustic bar, the kind of joint that extras on "Deliverance" might patronize for a pitcher after a hard day of terrorizing rafters. Her powers make her wary of filthy-minded customers, until she serves a 173-year-old vampire, Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), who looks like he just walked off the set of "One Tree Hill." He's sullen, mysterious, intimidating -- and she can't take her fluttery eyes off him. He, on the other hand, can't seem to stop staring at her neck.

In this not-so-distant setting, vampires are supposed to be equal citizens, no longer a danger to the public thanks to the creation of mass-produced synthetic blood. But this is a Ball production, which means that even a bargain at 7-Eleven won't be enough to keep some creatures' fangs in check, and that may or may not mean trouble for Stackhouse.

"A theme that seems to crop up for me a lot is the perils of intimacy," said Ball, whose film "Towelhead," about the sexual obsessions of an Arab-American girl, comes out this month. "In the case of Sookie and Bill, intimacy means feeding. And he's so much stronger than her. At the same time, it's terrifying to hear everybody's innermost thoughts. So that was a draw."

Ball wasn't looking to put his dark and often humorous imprint on the genre. He has never watched "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or read an Anne Rice novel.

But a few years ago, he was browsing at a Barnes & Noble bookstore, killing time before a dentist appointment, when he came across the title "Dead Until Dark" with the provocative tagline: "Maybe having a vampire for a boyfriend isn't such a bright idea."

Ball picked up the novel and learned it was the first in a 12-part series by Charlaine Harris. He also quickly discovered that he couldn't put it down.

"It's the kind of book that you think, 'I'm going to read one chapter before I go to bed' and then you read seven," he said. "About midway through the second book I thought it might make a good television show."

Harris' vampires may not be in lockstep with the Dracula tradition. Their fangs remind you more of a rattlesnake than a saber-toothed tiger. Their eyes don't turn colors before they attack. They don't evaporate into dust when a stake goes through their heart. No one appears to have a cape in the closet.

Ball might be scaling back on the coffin bed and garlic cloves, but he won't be able to avoid the input from diehard sci-fi fans who could make this as hot as the "Twilight" book series or throw it on the fire on top of CBS' recently canceled "Moonlight."

"Everybody has their idea of what a vampire is going to be, and they are never pleased all the time," said Stephen Moyer, who plays Compton. "Look at something like 'Interview With a Vampire.' Not everybody liked what they did. Others loved it."

Ask Paquin about her take on bloodsuckers, and she's as elusive as her character.

"I stopped dating vampires when I was 15," she said. "I couldn't possibly remember."