‘Blood’, Money and Death

'True Blood'
HBO, Sundays, 9 p.m.

There simply isn't enough vampire sex in the world. Vampire fiction, movies and television shows have a weird tendency to portray these creatures that exude sexual mystique in disappointingly chaste ways. So good for Alan Ball for making "True Blood," his first series since "Six Feet Under," big on the vampire sex.

"Blood," adapted from a series of novels by Charlaine Harris, invites us into a world where vampires walk among us, and try to stake…er…claim their place in society. Vampires "come out of the coffin" thanks to the invention of a synthetic beverage called TruBlood, which is like Ensure for bloodsuckers--all the nutrition, none of the corpses. Unfortunately, this is backwoods Louisiana, a place where the line "We don't take too kindly to your kind around here" seems to just roll off the tongue, so for a vampire, assimilating is no small feat.

Anna Paquin plays Sookie Stackhouse, a hot waitress at a local bar and grill, who is giddy when she sees a vampire come in for a drink. He's Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), a vampire not like the others. He has a gentle, kind way about him, and the upside for Sookie--who also happens to reads minds--is that she can't hear his thoughts. Her head is usually a cacophony of people's inner-monologued obscenities, but with Bill she finds peace. When the show focuses on Sookie and Bill, it's an engrossing love story of two people inexplicably drawn to each other, despite their differences.

But the show has to be broader than two characters, and when it delves into the lives of its ancillary characters, it gets downright silly. Sookie's gigolo brother, Jason (Ryan Kwanten) is both repelled and intrigued by vampires, leading him to take vampire's blood (it's a recreational drug), which gives him a painful erection. That's the kind of humor the show includes, along with, the love story, a series of unexplained vampire murders, and the social allegory (vampires = gays.) By the third episode, it has morphed from guilty pleasure to pure guilt. "True Blood" does a whole lot of things, but the love story--the part closest to Harris's original vision--is the only one that works. Plenty of vampire sex though, I can't stress that enough.

'Privileged'
The CW, Tuesdays, 9 p.m.

The CW has its shtick down now: it skews young and female--and those young females want a show that's fun and aspirational. Their new comedy "Privileged" certainly hits all those marks, though it manages to be weirdly derivative in getting there. Joanna Garcia plays Megan Smith, an aspiring writer in New York who wants to do serious journalism but is stuck at a shallow tabloid (see: "The Devil Wears Prada"). When she's fired, she gets a tip about a job in Palm Beach, Fla., tutoring Rose and Sage (Lucy Hale and Ashley Newbrough), two spoiled teen-terrors (see: "The Nanny Diaries"). Oh, and taking the job complicates things because Megan is from Palm Beach and trying to dodge her estranged sister, Lily (Kristina Apgar). And the mansion is filled with quirky, colorful help. (see: "Gilmore Girls"). Surprisingly, "Privileged" somehow works. Garcia is genuinely charming, and the dialogue gives her plenty to work with. When her editor looks askew at her hair, dyed fire-truck red, she offers a hilarious, self-deprecating explanation: "I figured, everybody loves Lucille Ball, but nobody ever does anything about it, right?"