Still drooling over vampires

THEY may have teeth the size of tombstones and love the taste of human blood, but are vampires really evil? That’s a tricky question to resolve.

Certainly Gothic literature would suggest they are. Author Bram Stoker’s legendary Dracula created a blueprint for bloodsuckers that lasted for a century.

His vampire – still the most famous being of its kind – wreaked havoc in Victorian Whitby and London before being chased across Europe to his Transylvanian ancestral home by Professor Van Helsing and his cohorts, where he was eventually destroyed.

In the past, the likes of Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee have become horror icons thanks to their portrayals of the outwardly charming but inwardly evil Count. However, times have changed, and now vamps are largely viewed as tragic figures – teenage girls everywhere have even fallen in love with some of them.

True Blood, along with Twilight, has been at the vanguard of this new movement, which sees vamps painted mostly in a favourable light. It also shows no sign of slowing down any time soon.

The most recent instalment in the Twilight movie saga, Breaking Dawn – Part 1, had a record-breaking opening at the cinema the other week. And a fifth season of True Blood has been commissioned by US broadcasting giant HBO.

At the moment, we’re still watching the third season, although it comes to a close tonight.

Throughout the run we’ve seen Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) dealing with his personal demons, a matter that comes to a head as he grapples with his conscience while putting his plan to kill Russell (Denis O’Hare) into effect.

Will he go through with it, or back out at the last moment, putting his own undead existence in danger?

Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) turns to religion for comfort after another bad Vampire trip, and Sookie (Anna Paquin) tires of living alongside the supernatural world – prompting her to imagine a life without Bill (Stephen Moyer) and his vampire colleagues.

Although the series is based on Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries novels, the TV version does deviate from them somewhat. For instance, Sookie is far closer to Eric in the books, but here she’s still involved with Bill.

Alexander Skarsgard plays the blond hunk, and he isn’t letting on whether Eric’s relationship with Sookie will develop any further in future, mostly because he claims he doesn’t know.

“You’d have to ask Alan (Ball, the executive producer) about that,” he says.

“(But) Sookie can’t stay with Bill forever, you know... That’s not great drama if they’re a happy couple... I guess that’s my job, to stir it up a little bit.”

DO vampires keep diaries? Surely it’s quite an undertaking, when you’re going to live forever. And surely the entries get a bit ‘samey’. You know, got up, ate some people, went and had a latte, tore the head off a Twilight doll...

Tonight’s episode of The Vampire Diaries is typically gruesome, exciting, steamy and intriguing, which are probably all words a vamp would use to describe themselves in their evening journal.

With help from Elena and Bonnie, Alaric tries to decipher the meaning behind his recent discovery. Elena and Rebekah (Claire Holt) engage in a mean-girl power struggle, until Rebekah finally reveals some of her family’s ancient secrets and the violent past she shares with Klaus and Elijah (Daniel Gillies).

ARTISTS draw inspiration from unlikely places and the documentary America On A Plate shows how people can make high art from the most bizarre of starting points. This is Stephen Smith’s re-envisioned story of 20th Century American culture through its most iconic institution – the diner.

Whether portrayed by Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks or as in the infamous encounter between Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in Heat, these gleaming, gawdy shacks are at the absolute heart of the American vision.

These homes of apple pie, endless coffee and bowls of soup with crackers, are a major slice of US life, and anybody who wishes that Wimpy were still around will want to see this homage to burgers served on plates.