FX UK Picks Up True Blood Season 2
FX UK has picked up the second season of True Blood, it has been announced.
The second run of the Alan Ball-created series will make its UK premiere in February 2010, following on from Channel 4’s terrestrial screening of season one.
Season one, which also debuted in the UK on FX, ended its run earlier this year with 172k (1.1%) in its Friday night slot, averaging 292k (1.2%) across its 12 episodes.
Michelle Forbes: An Introspective Look At True Blood
Having inhabited the character and played the role of Maryann for seventeen months, Forbes clearly believes that there is more to Maryann that meets the eye. As she explains it, love and faith are central themes to True Blood and Maryann is at the centre of this exploration:
“True Blood [is about] destructive love, sincere love, parental love, but also about faith […] The series highlights […] our inability to think for ourselves, our tendency to follow the ideology of a group for fear of seeming an outsider. This is an important reflection especially in an America that comes eight years after President Bush.”
At the same time, Michelle Forbes also acknowledges that these themes, while complex, require a narrative and visual arc to allow for a deeper exploration. She compares it to the process of painting a work of art:
“Any complex series needs time […] It’s like a painting. First you need to draw the outline […] and reach the goal step by step. It is absurd to expect a work to be perfect […] from the beginning.”
When asked if True Blood is a series about vampires, she indicates:
“I do not think True Blood [is simply] a “series about vampires” […] It is much more than that. It’s about a telepath, a man who turns into a dog, a girl who becomes a woman, a traumatized ex-soldier, an alcoholic cop who seeks respect and love […] This is not a vampire story [it] is the story of a village, Bon Temps, and [the] emotional and existential quests of its inhabitants.”
But Will The Town Be Called ‘Flow’?
Fox is developing an epic family drama called Howl, about competing werewolves in a small Alaskan town. The pilot for Howl is being written by Joshua Miller and M.A. Fortin. [Note: Not to be confused with Howl, the forthcoming movie in which James Franco plays Allen Ginsberg. Yeah, definitely don’t confuse those two.]
“Alaska is a place where people disappear and now you know why,” Miller said. Yeah, it’s true–whatever happened to Rob Morrow, anyway? Miller noted that our culture is in a state of flux right now, and werewolves are ideal for reflecting that change in drama. “Metamorphosis and constant change is the basis of werewolf mythology,” Miller explained, and the show’s themes will include “the psychology of living with change.”
Great news! There’s more Chuck than we thought
NBC originally ordered 13 episodes for the third season of its sci-fi spy comedy Chuck, then added six more when it moved the season premiere to January from March 2010, and now star Zachary Levi reveals that the new eps will tell a completely new storyline.
“What worked out in our favor was that we didn’t think we were going to do a back six,” Levi said in a group interview on Saturday in Beverly Hills, Calif., where he was promoting Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel.
“We were only going to do 13, so the writers wrote an arc for 1-13,” Levi added. “They were basically done writing them, and then the network said, ‘Hey, we’d like to do six more,’ and they’re like, ‘Well, great. We can’t rework the first arc, so we’ll just make these six stand alone.’ They’ll be based on the 13 that we do in the first part of the season, but it will be its own little mini-arc.”
Wow, Howl looks interesting. What do you think? Will you watch it?
Maryann from True Blood was one of the most unsettling characters I’ve seen on that show. I loved to hate her but I acknowledge she played the part well. What do you think?
