Book to TV: True Blood Season One

Adapting Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire series for HBO

Aug 19, 2009

True Blood offers fans of vampire TV an accessible and enjoyable journey into Charlaine Harris' urban fantasy world.

Casting the main characters in an adaptation of a book that's focused on romance is a tricky business. No matter who is chosen, some fans will be disappointed. When the hero concerned is a vampire, it's even more difficult. Romantic vampires take careful casting--they must be both sexy and dangerous, powerful and gentle, and above all, ooze charisma. A few TV shows and movies have achieved this mix admirably, and True Blood is arguably one of them.

True Blood's Vampires

The choice of Stephen Moyer to play Bill the Vampire in the television adaptation of the Sookie Stackhouse novels works well. (Co-star Anna Paquin obviously agrees--she and Moyer recently announced their real-life engagement.) Moyer's portrayal provides just the right mix of danger and devotion, making Sookie's relationship with Bill as believable on-screen as it is in the books. Paquin is well-cast as Sookie, as well, supplying just the right mixture of strength, femininity, and befuddlement as her world changes irrevocably around her.

The coup d'etat of True Blood's casting, though, is Alexander Skarsgård as Eric. An ancient, powerful vampire, Eric basically rules the vampire population of Louisiana. As blond and handsome as his name implies, Skarsgård carries the role with aplomb, dividing the show's fans into "Team Bill" and "Team Eric," as far as who they believe should eventually secure Sookie's long-term affection (though readers of the books already know).

Adapting Charlaine Harris

While the casting is convincingly true to the original novels, the story adaptation wanders. The main plotline of the first novel, Dead Until Dark, involving Sookie and Bill's romance, stays fairly close to the plot of the book, as does the overall murder mystery. The secondary plotlines, however, are very different.

In some ways, this isn't a bad thing. When the original source is a first-person narrative, many important plot points occur when secondary characters are "off screen," and so these bits of story can be filled in from the points of view of those characters when the story is adapted to the more flexible narrative form. Dexter is a good example of where this expansion technique works extremely well. The writers of Dexter successfully expand the backstories and activities of secondary characters to fill out the main plotline and give those characters considerably more screen time.

A similar approach has been taken in True Blood. However, most of the secondary characters diverge dramatically from their book counterparts, most notably Sookie's brother Jason, her best friend Tara, and Lafayette. The first season tangle of plot involving Jason, Lafayette, and their exploits with "V", or vampire blood taken recreationally, veers over the top, as does Tara's struggle with alleged demon possession.

In spite of these arguable flaws, True Blood is a watchable and entertaining show. And while it differs in many ways from its source material, it maintains much of the feeling of the books, and should appeal to most Charlaine Harris fans.

The copyright of the article Book to TV: True Blood Season One in Supernatural TV is owned by Katriena Knights. Permission to republish Book to TV: True Blood Season One in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.