TRUE BLOOD SERIES FOUR..

You may be wondering how am I talking about a TV show that's only just airing in the U.S,A. and the answer is Hooky Steve. Steve is a long time friend and is that rarest of things, a genuine market trader. His dad, Barry was a trader and Steve fell into the job by working on the stall at weekends when the rest of us were down the park or plonking our way through piano lessons. Markets are now not as common as they were back when I were a lad, so over the years, Steve and his Dad have had to diversify and adapt (in the words of management consultants) and now they buy and sell just about anything that's legal. Steve also sometimes has a few things that might best be described as "Grey". He does have some standards, though; he won't sell anything that he knows to be nicked. "I'm not a fence, Dave" he reminds me frequently. He also doesn't sell watches or gardening equipment.


As I'm a mate, and have got him into all kinds of places for free over the years, he frequently brings me stuff for nowt, mostly DVDs or clothing for the kids. Some of it is "totally right, Dave". Some of it is "little bit on the wobbly side, Dave." Most recently, he brought me a DVD of "Cars 2" which was so bad, that even my 5 year old son asked "Why is it so dirty, Daddy?". (He wasn't referring to some weird toon-porn version of the Pixar movie, more that it had been filmed on a mobile phone in an underwater cinema. Judging by the loud voices in the background, it was also somewhere in Korea.)


However, Steve's been coming up trumps with the latest episodes of True Blood, usually a couple of days after they've been broadcast in America. "Proper HD an all. Dave" said Steve and they are, too.


I am a HUGE fan of this series, right from the off. I've always had a tendency to gravitate towards the horrific and scary, as anyone who's met my ex-wife will tell you. Vampires have long been a particular favourite genre staple for me and the great thing about True Blood is it's more than just vampires. It's like a big lucky bag of creatures. Shapeshifters, werewolves, witches and a few things I don't know the name of, have all popped up in the wee town of Bon Temps. The first series was pretty much a metaphor for the civil rights/gay rights movement in the USA, with Vampires "coming out", looking for equality and acceptance )and in some cases assimilation), but with a whole other bunch of minorities/monsters also existing more underground. Over the next two series, no doubt due to the fact that it made a LOT of money, it stretched out and got quite deranged with storylines and characters. One of the things I like most about the show, is you genuinely never know what's going to happen next.  It's so wilfully twisty, turny and confounding. Some of this is apparently in the books, which I haven't and won't read. I prefer to watch the show instead, and just let my gob drop as the story mutates and morphs as often as many of the characters do every week.


Series Four began with a cracker:  After various run-ins with the King of the Vampires and a load of nasty biker werewolves, Sookie had been taken off by Faeries to some kind of soft-focus, Liberace-themed Garden of Eden at the end of Series Three and when she comes back to Bon Temps during Episode One, it transpires that although she thought she had been there for a matter of minutes, she's actually been away for eighteen months, and there have been a few changes whilst she's been away. In Walford, an 18 month absence would probably just mean that a few more old actors had joined the cast, or maybe Babs Windsor had come back to run the launderette with a new wig. Not so in True Blood. It's had more changes than the News International legal and finance team. I'm not about to spoil stuff for you here, as so much of the fun is in finding out, but if you love the series and know the characters, you will freak by the end of Episode Two.


As ever, all the men in the show are ridiculously buff and good looking, and there's a good helping of mucky, weird sex with a generous splatter of blood and gore. During the Eighteen months of Sookie's Faerie vacation, some of the characters you know best have undergone some major changes, some caused by the fact that many of them assumed Sookie to be dead. 


Happily, the dark and sometimes daft humour is still present and correct, with Eric The Viking Vampire having an especially funny and twisted turn during episode 3 (though for me, Eric is a little less scary these days since I noticed a few weeks ago, whilst watching Zoolander again, that he was one of the hugely stupid male models who self-immolate themselves in the gas station sequence).


4 weeks in, the series shows no signs of obeying any of the usual TV show rules (this is NOT a show for hugging and growing), nor has it got lazy. The pace is as bone-rattling as ever, and some of the characters appear to be gearing up for a huge barney. At this point, there's no clear sign of any big villain, like Russell Edgington in Series Three, but as all True Blood fans know, it's very early days yet. There's an interesting flashback in Episode Four which indicates a re-incarnated witch may be playing a big part in the mayhem and veteran stage actress Fiona Shaw chews the scenery to fine effect.


God knows what else is going to come our way - maybe a massive, hairy, fanged cat-beast that speaks Romanian and eats children. It's possible.


I dare say that at some point later in the year it will air in the UK on FX or another station. By then, we'll have finished Series 4 and will laugh at you.


MRS D's Verdict: "Even better than the last series" (She's not a massive werewolf fan).


RATING


For twisting more than the Murdochs at a select committee hearing -  5 out of 5
For copious amount of gore and nookie - 5 out of 5
For making Eric funny - 4 out of 5
For making my gob drop at least once per episode - 5 out of 5


19 out of 20. And still a load of episodes to go.