Guardian.co.uk article
True Blood is biting into the Buffy effect

With its sanguine exploration of teen and twentysomething sexuality,
the urban fantasy genre is going from strength to strength - a
certain cheerleader would be proud.

It's six years since the final episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
was first transmitted. That, you might have thought, was that. After
seven seasons, we'd surely had enough of bloodsuckers.

Except it hasn't turned out that way. It's not just that, in 2007,
Dark Horse Comics unleashed "season eight" of Buffy, a direct
continuation from the series, partly written by Buffy's creator, Joss
Whedon. Now vamps, vamp companions and eldritch folk in general are
suddenly everywhere.

In July, F/X will screen True Blood, an HBO series produced by Alan
Ball. Instead of residing Six Feet Under, this time a sizeable
percentage of its characters are the walking undead, vampires who
have revealed themselves to humans and apparently want to join our
wider community. Anna Paquin stars as Sookie Stackhouse, a telepathic
waitress attracted to bloodsucker Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) in
part because she can't hear his thoughts.

It's appropriate the show is based on a series of novels, the
Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris. Even as Buffy ended,
writers and publishers had already spotted an opportunity.

Welcome to the world of urban fantasy. This description covers a slew
of supernatural-themed books - many of which, it's worth emphasising,
pre-dated Buffy's demise. Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake series
focuses on a reanimator who wakes the dead. Jim Butcher's Harry
Dresden novels feature a wizard-cum-PI. Then there's Kim Harrison's
Rachel Morgan series, Mike Carey's Felix Castor novels, Stephenie
Meyer's Twilight books . the list goes on.

The new wave of eldritch has subsequently migrated to TV and the
movies. As well as True Blood, we've recently had Toby Whithouse's
Being Human in which a ghost, a vampire and a werewolf share a house
in Bristol. In Sweden, John Ajvide Lindqvist adapted his own novel,
Let the Right One in, to create an acclaimed cult vampire horror.
Meyer's Twilight books have made it to the big screen.

So what's going on ? Why has this collective obsession gone so far ?
Is it really just about missing the presence of a certain Sunnydale
resident ?

For one possible answer to these questions, consider a supernatural-
themed show that didn't make it past a single series. ITV's Demons
starred the admirable Philip Glenister, and there lay its biggest
problem. Supposedly, Glenister's Rupert Galvin was an advisor to
young Luke Rutherford. But Glenister dominated the series. It was if
someone had reimagined Buffy with Anthony Head's Giles at its core.

Wrong. Urban fantasy, at least when it makes the leap from the genre
ghetto to the mainstream, finds its audience because it places late
teenage and twentysomething angst at its epicentre. It's no
coincidence that vampires are so often its staple, rather than
werewolves or witches, because the dangerous sexuality of
bloodsuckers fits so snugly with the bedroom confusions of young
adulthood.

It's for this reason that many are suspicious of Stephenie Meyer.
With 42m books already sold worldwide, you can't argue with the scale
of Meyer's success, but the conservative, just-say-no dynamic between
Bella and her bloodsucking squeeze, Edward, deliberately desexualises
urban fantasy.

There's no such squeamishness in True Blood. Just the opposite
judging by the amount of flesh on show in the first episode. That
doesn't mean the series is all about titillation. Rather, like Buffy,
it's about a strong central character who's often underestimated :
Buffy because she's a bouncy cheerleader type, Sookie because she's a
kooky waitress.

There's another unavoidable comparison between Sookie and Buffy :
both fancy a fella with fangs. For Sookie and Compton, think Buffy
and Angel. Without wishing to suggest that True Blood doesn't stand
up in its own right - the season two opener was the highest-rated
show on HBO since the finale of The Sopranos - or that either
character can't get by without a male presence around, some stories
are just too good to drive a stake through.