By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 6 seconds ago
I’m an old-school fan of Joe Bob Briggs, the longtime movie critic and horror host who champions movies with three very important qualities: blood, lust, and beasts. These are the staples of the cheesiest and sleeziest movies ever made, and it can be hard to find a TV show that adapts this “so bad it’s good” vibe for the small screen.
If you want to check out an impossibly horny series filled with over-the-top gore and nudity galore, it’s time to stream True Blood on Hulu.
A Vampire Show That Doesn’t Suck
The premise of True Blood is that vampires have “come out of the coffin,” revealing themselves to the world after a Japanese company creates a synthetic blood that allows them to live without feeding on humans. One “mainstreaming” vamp is Bill Compton, who is trying to start a normie life by moving back to his small Louisiana hometown. When he falls in love with a local waitress who can read minds, they are both thrust into a world of dangers that include shapeshifters, werewolves, cultists, and so much more.
The cast of True Blood is full of big names: Ana Paquin (best known for the original X-Men movies) plays the perky, bite-curious waitress who falls in love with the straight-laced vampire next door, played by Stephen Moyer (best known outside this show for The Double). He eventually has a vampire daughter (it’s complicated) played by Deborah Ann Woll, who is best known outside this show for Daredevil. Oh, and our normie vampire male main character works for a domineering vamp played by Alexander Skarsgård (best known for The Legend of Tarzan, though I preferred him in Infinity Pool).
I could talk about this killer cast all day. While the above are arguably the more famous names, True Blood is full of lesser-known actors that are absolutely pitch-perfect in their roles. Sam Trammell is every gal’s fantasy of a charming southern gentleman, even though his character’s charisma hides a shocking secret. Ryan Kwanten plays dumb like nobody else as the main character’s brother, and the late, great Nelsan Ellis steals every scene as a short-order cook by day and the sketchiest entrepreneur in the world by night.
Putting a Glamour On Critics
True Blood is a show that sank its teeth into critics early on: while Season 1 has a 63 percent overall rating on Rotten Tomatoes (making it far fresher than your average vampire), Season 2 has an 89 percent rating, and Season 3 has a whopping 91 percent. While it’s like most genre shows in that it had a slightly rocky start (looking at you, Star Trek: The Next Generation), True Blood soon became appointment television. Back when Game of Thrones was still just a book series, this show full of sex, monsters, and sexy monsters was the reason people tuned into HBO each week.
Speaking of sex, I really can’t emphasize enough how weirdly horny this show is. Our two leads can barely make it out of the bedroom, and the show fully leans into how kinky their human/vampire relationship really is.
Fair warning: this leads to scenes like Vampire Bill snacking on Sookie’s neck before making out with her, leaving dark blood to trickle down Ana Paquin’s pale skin. Wet-and-wild blood play is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to True Blood’s exploration of the intersection of sex and violence.
Catnip For Kinky Couples
With that kind of description, you might think that True Blood is a show only catering to guys, but this series has always been popular with women. That’s because this show, like the books it is based on (The Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris), is an early example of the dark romance genre that is now insanely popular with literature-loving women. In short, if the special gal in your life enjoys smutty books (especially ones occasionally featuring non-human characters), she is likely to enjoy watching how True Blood brings this genre’s naughtiest ideas to life, complete with smoking hot actors.
Even if your gal’s bookshelf isn’t brimming with romance novels, you will likely enjoy binge-watching True Blood together. For all its weirdness, this is a love story, and it’s undeniable fun for a real-life couple to watch this pair of star-crossed onscreen lovers trying to find happiness with each other. If the path to inner happiness just happens to include some of the freakiest sex scenes ever filmed, that’s just a bonus!
Will you agree that True Blood is a sexy series that every couple should watch together? Or is this one vampy, campy show that you’d rather drive a stake into? The only way to find out is to stream it on Hulu; for best results, start playing it in the bedroom and see where the bite (er, night) takes you!
