True Blood Returns to HBO on Sunday, June 14

It's official: HBO's vampire series, True Blood, is a smash hit. A new season starts Sunday, June 14. During its first season, True Blood gathered flocks of enthusiastic fans with "hungry appetites" for the bloody storyline. The main theme is similar to the movie Twilight - beautiful mortal girl falls in love with gorgeous, good-hearted vampire guy.

For nearly a century, the legend of vampires has been popular entertainment. But with True Blood, which is based on the best selling Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris, HBO has found a new twist - vampires supposedly "came out of the closet" two years ago, and they've been facing discrimination and intolerance ever since.

HBO's True Blood is set in a steamy, rural Louisiana town called Bon Temps (French for "good times"). Its dead-but-virile vampire hero, Bill Compton, was a soldier on the way home from the Civil War when he begged shelter at a widow's cabin. But she turned out to be a vampire who fed on him. He died, becoming a vampire himself. He was doomed to live immortally, against his will.

Now in present-day, the vampires have a TV spokesperson - a well-dressed, attractive blonde female who goes on talk shows to convince people that vampires are just like everyone else.

So Bill's done what the vampires call "mainstreaming" - trying to get back into human society. Although he can still only go out at night, he dresses like other men, falls in love with a human girl, and goes to the local human hotspot instead of vampire bars. He's determined to be a good guy and doesn't like to feed on real human blood. His drink of choice for nourishment is the new, synthetically produced Japanese product "True Blood."

At the human hangout, there's some intolerant talk toward the vampires, since some of them do still feed on humans to the death. Bill's mortal girlfriend, Sookie (played by Oscar winner Anna Paquin), has the ability to hear other peoples' thoughts. So she hears many of the unpleasant remarks made toward vampires and toward the humans who are willing to associate with them. When first meeting Bill, she is immediately enthralled with the prospect of losing her virginity to this handsome fanged hunk.

Ironically for the vampires, it turns out vampire blood ("V") is a hot commodity drug among humans. People are becoming addicted to "V" for the blissful high it creates. Some vampires sell their blood for money; others are trapped and exploited by humans for it.

True Blood makes the usual Hollywood politically correct statement - those who are against vampires are usually religious bad guys. In Season One, a law-abiding churchgoer turned out to be the merciless murderer of "fangbangers" (women who sleep with vampires), a Christian TV preacher spit hatred at vampires from his bully pulpit, and a senator - Republican, of course - hypocritically bad-mouthed vampires while sleeping with a gay "V" dealer. But...there is also some blatant black and gay stereotyping which wouldn't be tolerated if it came from a source other than Hollywood.

Beside the vampires, we find out that werewolves and "shape shifters" (people who can turn into animals) are real. But they haven't reached the acceptance status of vampires yet. The total integration of vampires will help the town of Bon Temps take that next step.

A new growing danger with the popularity of vampire stories is that there are actual groups of people today who are dressing like their idea of vampires and even trying to live like them. Some even claim to be biting people and drinking real blood. But - let's be tolerant.

True Blood gets a couple thumbs up for creativity and the very attractive Stephen Moyer as Bill Compton, but don't let the kids stay up late. There's oodles of sex, swearing, and violence.