True Blood: Turn! Turn! Turn!

"There is dirt in my bra!"

So Tara's dead. Actually dead. There's absolutely no way that a distraught Sookie and Lafayette, in this season opener to a vampire-based series, can possibly save... oh. Cool.

Meanwhile Eric and Bill are both in trouble with the Authority, and duly caught by Nora, Eric's "sister" and also progeny of Godric. I suppose that, technically, their constant shagging of each other isn't actually incest...

Steve Newlin is indeed a vampire, which is a huge surprise, and a "gay vampire-American", which isn't. Nor is it particularly surprising that he has a thing for Jason, although unfortunately "the dog don't bite that way". Pam spends the whole episode being awesome.

Meanwhile Sam, Luna and Emma all have to leave as they're being pursued for the death of Matcus but, alas, it's too late. Andy has an embarrassing Facebook incident. And Alcide takes time to tell Sookie, at an inconvenient moment, that Russell Edgington is free. You can certainly tell that this is a season opener; stuff is happening and being set up all over the place.

In yet another plot thread, Terry's old sergeant explains that, of their whole unit, all of them have had house fires. Is the remaining veteran an arsonist? My bet's on something more supernatural. It seems Terry has a dark secret from Iraq. Is this what "Rene" was alluding to?

Jessica is living the party lifestyle without Bill- I love her rendition of "Cherry Bomb"- but her and Jason's relationship is very uncertain. A lot is in flux as we end this excellent episode with Tara's resurrection as a vampire...

True Blood: Spellbound

"Jesus, tits and God America, Jason!"

Now here's a tune I recognise- classic early period Siouxie and the Banshees!

Anyway... Jason saves Jessica- and she's very grateful. But vampires are still not safe until nightfall as the spell may happen again: they must chain themselves indoors with silver. How very kinky.

On the one hand, this brings Sookie erotically closer to amnesiac Eric. On the other, Jessica brutally dumps Hoyt, and he doesn't react well.

But this is a very romantic episode nonetheless, with extended erotic sequences of Sookie and Eric in bed together in the artily shot snow. But Antonia/Marcie are planning full vampire genocide. Tara seems quite happy with this. We know that Bill's offer of a parley cannot go well.

Meanwhile Lafayette again sees the ghostly Creole lady with little Mikey. We discover that she lived a few decades ago, and that she and her baby were killed by her white lover, afraid of being caught having fathered a mixed race child. It's a reminder that this sort of racist horror is never far from the surface in the Deep South.

Meanwhile, we and Sam discover that her menacing ex, and Emma's father, is local werewolf packmaster Marcus, whom we've got to know a little through Alcide and Debbie. It's the sort of shock revelation that True Blood does very well.

Cruelly, Jessica is rejected by Jason out of loyalty for his best friend, even though she left Hoyt for him. Even more cruel is Lafayette's possession by the Creole lady, and his swift seizing of baby Mikey. But we end with the parley, swiftly degenerating into fast and confusing scenes of fighting. It's all beautifully shot, but Sookie uses her powers and receives a bullet, there is much commotion and Antonia bewitches Eric...

Superb stuff.

True Blood: Me and the Devil

"Insanity comes with the job."

Tommy isn't in the clutches of his awful parents for long; he kills them. Oops. Meanwhile, Marnie is increasingly friendless, Eric is still an innocent without a past and Terry suggests to Arlene that they get an exorcist in. Cool.

Lafayette and Jesus are off to Mexico to see the latter's magician grandad, a sort of Mexican Alan Moore, and to generally start their own plot line full of trippily directed arty sequences. Jason pours his heart out to Hoyt about his recent Viagra-assisted gang rape. And said exorcist turns out to be the Reverend Daniels with Lettie Mae, not from the sort of church Arlene prefers. 

Probably most pivotal is Sookie's meeting with Marnie for a bit of a seance where she hears her Gran's voice, telling her very clearly that Marnie is dangerous. If that isn't foreshadowing then I don't know what is.

And then Marnie is possessed, seemingly permanently, by the woman from those Spanish Inquisition flashbacks who probably has some rather unpleasant agenda. Again, oh dear.

Things don't get better for Arlene and Terry with a fire starting, while Jason is attracted to Jessica, his best friend's girlfriend, after having her blood. 

We end with Bill giving us some backstory: the Inquisition woman was Antonia, a necromancers whose dying act was to exterminate all vampires within twenty miles by burning them in daylight. At the time the Catholic Church was full of vampires, although "Today, as you know, it's Google and Fox News".

At last we get a clear idea of the real big bad in an eventful episode.True Blood just gets better and better.

True Blood: Fresh Blood

"There are consequences, even for Russell Edgington."

It looks as though it's the jealousy of Eric's Estonian human girl that leads to her pleasingly random release, beginning a heady and eventful penultimate episode.

Lafayette and Jesus are both enthusiastic and changed by their recent V trip; their future clearly involves magic, but I suspect that's for next season. Crystal, meanwhile, explains that she has to marry her brother in order to carry on the werepanthet bloodline, dropping sprog after sprog until meoopause or death. Ouch.

But mostly we just have things unwind in the complex power play between Edgington, Eric and Bill, with Sookie in an awkward and dangerous place. Arlene tried unsuccessfully to get rid of her Damien baby although, being from the Deep South, she opposes abortion. Er, right.

Jessica and Hoyt are properly together again, and as sweet as ever. But mostly this is a dark episode, with Tara so devastated, Sam still out of character and firing poor, vulnerable Tommy, and Jason worried about another Waco with Crystal's family. And now Russell knows (courtesy of Bill's shocking apparent betrayal) what Sookie is. And he fully intends to test the legend of fairy blood allowing a vampire to walk in daylight. But there's a catch: Eric must go first. Yet he does, seemingly without incident, and Edgington follows. But it's a trap; soon Eric has Edgington where he wants them as they both burn together in a dramatic cliffhanger. This season is extraordinary.

True Blood: Bad Blood

"Pam, I'm in no mood for lesbian weirdness!"

Again we continue straight on from the dramatic season finale, with Bill missing, Eggs just having been shot dead by Jason and Sam looking for his birth family. Not much is resolved, per se, but much is set up and, as it leaves you wanting more, this is a bloody good season opener.

Bill, it seems, has been kidnapped by a bunch of blokes who want to feed on his blood. Tara is distraught, and in no mood for Arlene's horribly racist comments- but I suppose a character like her, a working class white woman in the Deep South, would hold all sorts of horrible views. At least Eric is duty-bound as to help look for Bill; the police were distinctly unhelpful. Crime against vampires, it seems, is taken as seriously as black-on-black crime.

Sam, meanwhile, is up in Arkansas following up leads and, er, having awkwardly erotic dreams about Bill after ingesting his blood. Arlene is pregnant! And the Magister is getting suspicious about Eric and Queen Sophie-Anne dealing V. The Queen, in particular, is so cool that she gets her own directorial flourishes.

Sookie's on the case, but over in Mississippi Bill has werewolf trouble- are they the season's big bad? And what's with their tatto, the same one seen in Seadon 5 of Grimm? There's so much going on. I love it.

True Blood: Frenzy

"Tiny, tiny souls. Or penises. Or both."

I love the Queen of Louisiana- mad as a brush, delightfully polysexual and keen on Yahtzee- a rather boring game to us sane people but let us not be prejudiced. Anyway, she provides some much-needed exposition on how a Maenad may be killed- apparently she needs to be persuaded that her God is ravishing and sacrificing her, and she will die in joyful agony. Perhaps. We'll see. 

There's another big revelation too- it was Tara who summoned Maryann through that silly exorcism. Even quack ceremonies have power, which is a scary concept. There's a surprising amount of exposition and explanation for such an action-filled episode. Indeed, it's so action-filled that there's surprisingly little to write about.

There's a bit of intrigue, too, as Bill threatens to tell the queen about Eric selling V-juice, Hoyt hears devastating things about his past and Jason and Andy bond over both being thick. But it's all hands to the final showdown now as we prepare to end a superb season...

True Blood: Nothing But the Blood

"My ass is magnetic now!"

Season Two, then- but we continue straight on. There's even a reprise. The body isn't Lafayette: it's that fraudulent "exorcist", which is a relief. Not for Andy, though: Bud isn't impressed with his behaviour and, arguably, he could even be a suspect. His career, post-Rene, seems to be going quickly downhill.

Tara's mother doesn't take the news well, but then she's a bitch. And it's glorious to see the bollocking she gets from Maryann. Less glorious is the position of Lafayette, being kept as a prisoner by Eric and in far from luxurious circumstances, quite a contrast with his cousin.

Sookie isn't pleased to find out about Jessica; Bill had two weeks to tell her. It's a bloody good job for him that he earned all those brownie points in the season finale. Sookie doesn't like secrets. I suspect they're going to clash later about other secrets still to be revealed.

We find more of Maryann- Sam burgled her, aged 17, and stole a huge wodge of cash with which, presumably, he proceeded to set up in business. I'm not sure, at this stage, whether the big bad if the season is going to be her or religious cult leader Steve Newlin, who has the gullible Jason in his clutches for an expensive "leadership course" which he can suddenly afford after the death of his and Sookie's paedo uncle.

Maryann is fascinating, supplying her guests with both pot and good conversation yet treating her British underling like shit. And she clearly isn't human. What is clear, though, is that Tara and Eggs are getting on very well. I hope Tara doesn't get her heart broken.

A lots being set up for the new season and it could go in any direction.whatever, this is still bloody good telly.

True Blood: Sparks Fly Out

"Excuse me, who ordered the hamburger with AIDS?"

Bill has weird musical tastes, which makes sense. The older you get, the more open-minded you become, and the less tolerant of MOR chart fodder crap. I like him more and more. The highlight of another excellent episode, however, is Jason demonstrating to Lafayette exactly what happened to his penis without anaesthetic by means of a sausage. Er, nice. At least, for balance, Lafayette gets a scene later on where he deals magnificently with a homophobe.

This episode focuses on the talk given by Bill, a former Confederate soldiers, to a disturbingly large number of people who seem to think that supporting said cause is in some way not blatantly racist. No wonder Tara feels so uncomfortable. And no, I still don't understand why Americans don't treat people like this as traitors but, well, it's their country, not mine. Bill gives a good speech, anyway.

Interesting to see some myths dispelled, too: vampires can enter churches, touch crosses, appear in mirrors- this is a much stripped down and secularised take on the vampire myth. But the bigger revelation is how Bill was turned into a vampire, against his will and because of the very integrity that drives him today. His tale is truly tragic: his forced separation from his wife and children is simply unimaginable.

Poor Tara continues to suffer from her unfortunate crush on Jason, an absolute slut who, V-Juice or not, inevitably betrays her with the first girl he comes across. Tara is a deeply sympathetic character, but so are so many others. 

A brilliant episode. But, just when it seems the stakes can't get any higher, Sookie suddenly finds her frandmother's viokentky murdered corpse...