We all love Vampire TV Shows, and recent years have seen the development of some amazing new ones: The Strain and From Dusk Til Dawn in particular have proven to be epic new outings for Fang Fans.
But for some of us, it’s never enough.
I, for one, am still mourning the loss of Buffy, and with True Blood over and The Vampire Diaries coming to an end, the world of Television is wide open for new Vamp action – or perhaps some old vamp action given a new lease of life. Fortunately, there are a few new things in the pipe lines that are set to fill the void. Here are three I’m really looking forward to…
Let The Right One In
Originally a fabulous book by Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist, the Swedish 2008 film Let the Right One In is getting a TV remake on the tails of the (2010) American reboot of the film. Jeff Davis, of Criminal Minds, has written a pilot for TNT. The series will (like the book) focus on a the friendship between a human boy, Oskar, and a female vampire, Eli, who – much like Claudia in Interview With A Vampire – is trapped in a child’s body.
I will be really interested to see how they handle a series of this, as it presents several obvious problems:
The actress playing Eli will age!
The book deals mainly with Eli’s ambiguous sexuality, as a girl who matured into a woman (now several hundred years old) but remains in the body of a child. There’s much potential awkwardness here, firstly in having a young actor playing a sexualised role, secondly in the dynamic between the two main characters.
Eli may look like a child, but she’s been alive for hundred of years and is now befriending a very young boy. If the genders of the characters were reversed, we would be pitching a fit about this – an old vampire influencing a young girl. For some reason, it’s not so creepy as an old female vampire influencing a young boy, yet that ick factor is still there if you stop and think about it (especially if she’s going to follow the Eli of the novel, and have that ambiguous sexual nature.
The Lost Boys
We all loved the 1987 film starring Kiefer Sutherland, the majority of us refuse to even acknowledge the sequels, but now CW are bringing us a small screen reboot from Rob Thomas, the creator behind Veronica Mars. The concept is certainly interesting (and ambitious!) with a planned seven year run, with each season covering one specific decade.
I’m very interested to see if the boys retain their bad boy, villainous personas in the transition to the small screen. Historically TV and films prefer vamps to fall into three camps: heart throbs, monsters, and tortured souls/sometimes villains. I can see David and co fitting into the sometimes villain category without too much trouble, but I would far rather they retained their entirely villainous natures.
Midnight, Texas
I’ve not been able to did up much on this NBC series yet, other than the fact it will be based on a trilogy by Charlainne Harris, author of True Blood. There will be vampires, for sure, but also a lot of other creatures from myth and legend. It focuses on a single town in Texas that is a sanctuary, of sorts, for supernatural beings…Thus far it’s sounding a lot like True Blood Mark 2, and I’m unsure how interesting it will be, but time will tell!
