Noelle McCarthy: 'Caring' vampires make my blood boil

Of all the things we did in Auckland, my sister enjoyed the vampires the most. The scenery was pretty, the shopping excellent and the food delectable, but nothing we did, ate or saw compared to her Undead experience last week.

This isn't surprising really. As a child of the Buffy era, she's the ideal audience for a vampire yarn, even more so when it comes with a sweet tinge of star-crossed love and a healthy dollop of postmodern self-awareness.

So she was always going to be a sucker - ahem - for new television series True Blood. Prime invited us to a special sneak peek screening last week and after just one episode the sister was well and truly infected.

It's a smart little package - the story of a romance between a sassy little mind-reading southern waitress called Sookie, and a gentlemanly vampire called Bill in a little Louisiana town called Bon Temps. On the Bayou presumably, although we haven't seen the Bayou yet, and I'm not sure I'd even recognise a Bayou if we did.

Sookie, as played by Oscar-winning Kiwi prodigy Anna Paquin, is a delectable proposition, a young woman as wise as she is pert. That unusual combination of attributes owes as much to her ability to tune into the thoughts of those around her as it does to good underwiring.

Bill, on the other hand, is a brooding sort of chap, as befits a 170-year-old ex-confederate soldier with a very long memory. Their romance is made possible only by the True Blood of the title, a synthetic blood substitute concocted by the Japanese.

Now they've got "true blood", vampires no longer need to prey on humans and so, in this world at least, they've come out of the coffin and are taking their place in society.

So far, so obviously metaphorical. Whatever you think about grafting the struggle for vampire equality to the history of the American civil rights movement (and many US reviewers were not at all amused by the conceit), series creator Alan Ball does a neat little job of imagining the plight of vampires in a post-affirmative action society. There's some seriously steamy sexy time as well, which is enjoyable, once you can get over the fact that it's Vinny from

Home and Away who gets his kit off compulsively. And the love story between the two leads has the potential to generate some chemistry (unsurprising as they're together in real life).

It's been enough to infect my sister at any rate. She's already raving about it on Facebook and is ready to take this fever for southern gothic action home with her tomorrow.

There's nothing unusual there either - vampires have always been great travellers, crossing national and cultural boundaries willy nilly to wreak all kinds of merry hell once they get there.

Granted this may be the first recorded instance of Louisiana-based vampires hitting Ireland via Auckland, (True Blood isn't out there yet) but it's a natural development.

The question is though, exactly what sort of vampire is my sister taking home? I ask the question as someone genuinely concerned.

In a way it was vampires that brought me to New Zealand. I came over here initially to take a sabbatical from a postgrad thesis I was writing, about Dracula mostly.

Since the age of 12 I've devoured every scrap about vampires I could get my hands on. I'm not alone in this I know, they have a powerful hold over many people all over the world.

It's what makes them compelling, and worthy of scrutiny. So you'd think I'd be thrilled about the current explosion of interest in all things Undead.

The millions of teenage girls around the world swooning over the Twilight saga, Stephane Meyer's trilogy of books chronicling the love affair between a teenage vampire and his high-school sweetheart, or the thousands of people joining True Blood fan groups on the internet.

But, as an old-school lover of Bram Stoker's thrilling, purple prose in Dracula, I can't help be ambivalent about the sorts of vampires who are getting around these days.

Take Bill Compton and Edward Cullen. One's a 170-something-year-old ex-confederate who swigs blood out of a bottle and asks his waitress if he may call on her sometime.

The other is an eternal 17-year-old, piano-playing "vegetarian" vampire (only eats bears) who won't kiss his girlfriend lest things go too far.

I grant you, in this case "going to far" means actually devouring her rather than just heavy petting, but come on? Vampires who take it slowly? Say "there's no rush"? Date you? Vampires who wait? A load of rubbish.

The thrill of the vampire is sexual, pure and simple. It always has been and always will.

It's what scares and compels us when we think about them.

It's about drinking blood and ... you don't need me to explain the metaphor. Dracula has never been out of print since it was first serialised in 1897.