True Blood comes to a boil while Generation Kill makes its debut.

It’s good to see that the reigning champs of non-crappy television over at HBO aren’t going to give up easily just because their big hits likeThe Sopranos, The Wire and Deadwood have all been laid to rest.

Though word of its existence went around a while back, there wasn’t much information available about their new fall show, True Blood. All we had to go on was that it’s a series about modern day vampires from Alan Ball, the creator of Six Feet Under.

In the past few weeks, ads for a synthetic blood substitute drink called Tru Blood have started appearing in magazines, on outdoor posters and online as a teaser campaign for the show, finally giving some hints as to what the show’s about. I first saw one in Entertainment Weekly before spotting them on bus shelters around town, so it’s good to see there’s going to be a strong push for this show; that usually means they think it’s worth watching, right?

Building around the hypothetical situation of vampires living openly among us — now that midnight snacks don’t necessitate murder — could be an interesting premise. Going the subtle route by advertising the fictional product rather than slapping famous faces on a poster also shows some class, and gets points for mystique.

However, following the link to their site brings up a fake blog called Blood Copy that “chronicles the amazing days we live in as vampires attempt to integrate with humans”, full of cheaply produced fake news stories and video clips, which was obviously farmed out to a viral marketing company. It’s your basic, ‘Oh man, is it really real?’ set up that’s more embarrassing than mysterious, and threatens to turn off anyone who may have been interested enough in the show to surf that far. See for yourself.

Taken together, it’s hard to tell which side of the fence this will fall on. The blog and its cheesy videos, which are badly filmed and acted, give off a B-movie vibe. The series of books the show is based on appear to be of the light/trashy airport paperback variety, which could be another reason to doubt it’ll be anything other than camp.

At the same time, I’m really pulling for this show to be good. Six Feet Under is still my favorite HBO series (blasphemy, I know, but I can explain that in another article), so I want to have faith in Alan Ball here. Ana Pacquin’s set to star, and she’s capable of good things. And although I never got Buffy fever like some people I know, shows like that and Battlestar Galactica have shown you can build a strong series around a fantastical premise if it’s treated the right way, despite the inherent goofiness of monsters or robots. It may even be too soon to pigeonhole it to the realm of fantasy; who knows, the director of American Beauty can find a way to finally make a serious and sensual vampire story without it becoming comical a la Blade or just boring like Interview with a Vampire. Until some sort of real promo trailers show up, it’s all speculation until it airs in September.

……….

To bridge the gap until then, we get an Iraq miniseries from the creators of The Wire, which debuted last night. Although it would be nearly impossible to top the greatness of their previous work, the first episode of Generation Kill was promising. The trick is the tone. It’s not exclusively macho in that first-half-of-Full Metal Jacket way, or bleak and mopey in a Jarhead way. Although it is still very coarse and open about what I can only imagine Marines are like in a war zone, there’s also humor and honest personality; never has a TV show existed where you’ll see so many copies of Hustler while hearing this much racist bravado interspersed with an equal amount of ‘bro’’s. And it wouldn’t be a David Simon show without his ability to portray the frustration of real people trying to do a good job under drastic circumstances, with insufficient resources and bureaucratic bullshit getting in the way. I’m sort of amazed it took him this long to get around to the war, frankly. Plus, we finally get more Ziggy Sobotka, which I fully support. His smartass Humvee driver character is the highlight of the series so far.