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This page will be devoted solely to the Undead, and certainly will not be limited to just vampire romance or books. Over the coming weeks please watch for articles, reviews, fun links, and anything else I can come up with to celebrate the vampire!
MOONLIGHT's Mick St. John, played by Australian actor Alex O'Loughlin, doesn't look like a vampire, but then again, neither did Gerant Wyn Davies of FOREVER KNIGHT. Mick is good-looking in a good-guy boyish way, but his character seems soft and lacking the edge that makes vampire characters great. Mick's vampire mentor Joseph looks even less like a vampire, but perhaps that's part of what the show is about--that vampires have so thoroughly become a part of human society that no one would ever know by looking at them what they truly are. My own ficitonal vampires have always tended to be more "human" than other vamps in modern fiction and lore, so I can't fault the show for that.
What will ultimately make or break the show with its largely (I suspect) female audience will be the romantic story between Mick and tabloid reporter Beth Turner. So far that angle of the show looks promising. Mick saved Beth when she was a small child, so there is already a history between the two, but only time will tell if the chemistry and sexual tension are good enough to carry the show.
MOONLIGHT has promise, but so far the jury's still out on how good this show will be. My first episode grade: C+
As for BLOOD TIES, Lifetime's web site isn't saying much about the new season, except that new episodes will be airing this fall. Tanya Huff hasn't updated her related blog since May. However it does appear that the show will be debuting on October 12th and moving from Sunday to Friday, which will make Friday nights vamp night for sure! Unfortunately, actress Gina Holden left the series to do FLASH, a bad career move in my opinion. I tried watching the debut episode of FLASH and couldn't even get thru it. Bad, bad, bad. I will miss Gina's quirky, smart character of Coreen, Vicki's assistant.
August 19, 2007: TV NEWS! It looks like it's going to be a great new TV season for lovers of the undead. According to Lifetime BLOOD TIES will be back with new episodes. Yeah!!!
Apparently the networks have taken notice that there's a sizeable paranormal audience out there. CBS will be running MOONLIGHT on Fridays in the 9:00 slot. The show stars Alex O'Loughlin as Mick St. John, a vampire who was turned 60 years ago on his wedding night (to a vampire! I wonder if she shows up in the present day story?) He now works as a private investigator and splits his time between mortals and battling the undead forces of the underworld. He's in love with a mortal and struggles to accept the monster inside himself. Hello, FOREVER KNIGHT! Hey, if there's a similarity, that's okay with me. I loved FOREVER KNIGHT.
The news at Fox isn't so good. I was excited about NEW AMSTERDAM, a drama about a man who's lived for thousands of years and uses his immortal knowledge now as a cop to catch bad guys. The lead is another unknown, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (great name to play an immortal), but from the few previews I've seen, he's a hunk worth watching. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Fox has decided to bump this show from the fall lineup and insert it down the road as a midseason replacement. From the online comments I've read, fans are mightily unhappy about this. Including me! What is Fox thinking???
Luckily we have BLOOD TIES and MOONLIGHT. Hopefully they'll be around a while, providing, as one columnist put it, that the new shows don't suck!
April, 2007: Finally! A new vampire series is on TV, and I couldn't be happier. It's called BLOOD TIES and it's on Lifetime on Sunday nights. The series is based on the Blood Books by Tanya Huff and follows the adventures of Vicki Nelson, an ex-cop turned private eye. The two men in her life are Mike, her ex-partner, and Henry, a vampire who claims to be a son of Henry VIII. Vicki isn't exactly thrilled about becoming the Ghostbuster of Toronto, but cases involving demons, ghosts and voodoo seem to be coming her way with increasing regularity. Luckily she has a vampire and a cop to help her solve her cases and stay alive.
I'm enjoying this series immensely. The dialogue is clever, the characters are great, and, of course, there's all that chemistry. Vicki and Mike had a kinda-sorta relationship when they were cops. Will Vicki and Henry have a future relationship? Will Mike and Henry refrain from battling each other?
Lifetime has a great website devoted to the show. Check it out HERE.
Also check out Tanya Huff's great blog regarding the show, her books, and the making of the series: TANYA'S BLOG
To find your own personal Vampire Name, visit the Great Archives by clicking HERE. As an example, the Great Archives have determined that I have gone by the identity of "Empress of the Night," known in some parts of the world as "Demon of the Steely Moon." The record shows this to be "a child of the Moon Goddess - Cold, determined, but of the light of the night."
Hot Vampire Links!
Webrings...
Vampire Fiction...
Love Vampires...for reviews, author interviews, and a great discussion board
Authors...
Anne Rice...the one and only
For All Your Answers...
Everything You Need to Know About Vampires...a comprehensive site on the terms, legends, myths of vampires, as well as vampires in popular culture, vampire book and movie reviews. A great site for research!
Vampires: Medieval Thru Renaissance Periods...case studies and medical explanations for vampirism.
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September 29, 2007: I watched the debut episode of MOONLIGHT last night. Needless to say, it was, for me, the most highly anticipated of the new fall shows. I liked it, but I didn't love it. BLOOD TIES' first episode last spring impressed me more with its kick-ass heroine, snappy dialogue, and two hunks competing for Vicki Nelson's atention.